Colin Gray, the father of the teenager accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school faces a 180-year prison sentence for allegedly buying him the gun as a Christmas present.
His 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, faced life in prison, Judge Currie Mingledorff II told Barrow County Court on Friday.
Initially, the teenager was warned that if convicted he could face the death sentence for four counts of felony murder.
However, the judge later corrected his remarks given the minimum age for capital punishment in Georgia is 18, telling the teenager he faced a life sentence.
Colt Gray, who was wearing a green top, sat silently as the judge laid out the potential penalties before later sobbing. He did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody.
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Shortly afterwards, he was followed in court by his 54-year-old father, who has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Handcuffed and wearing grey-and-white prison fatigues, he rocked in his seat and cried during the brief hearing. Like his son, he did not enter a plea.
Both father and son could face further charges, said Brad Smith, the Barrow County District Attorney, after the hearing.
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The victims of the shooting on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, north-east of Atlanta, were named as Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, and maths teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
Nine other people were injured, but authorities said they would recover.
The families of the victims sat in the front row of the court as the proceedings unfolded.
Mr Gray had been arrested amid reports that the AR-15 style rifle used in the killing may have been bought as a Christmas present.
Colt Gray was interviewed by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office last year after they were tipped off by the FBI over threats posted on Discord, an online gaming chat site.
Warning of a school shooting at “an unidentified location and time”, the threat was on a site called Lanza – the surname of the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.
Investigators visited the Grays’ house, where his father said he owned hunting guns, but that his son did not have unsupervised access to the weapons.
The suspect denied making any online threats at the time and said he had deleted his account on the site.
However, NBC reported that Colt’s internet search history showed interest in prior mass school shootings, including the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
According to witnesses of the shooting, Colt left the classroom at around 9.45am on Wednesday. Lyela Sayarath, a student who was sitting next to the suspect in algebra minutes before, said he showed no signs of what he was about to carry out. When he left, she assumed he was skipping class again.
Returning with a gun, he was unable to get into his classroom. Instead, he went into a classroom next door and started firing.
The suspect was allegedly bullied by his peers and frequently called “gay”, his father told investigators in a phone call in 2023.
“[They] just ridiculed him day after day after day,” Mr Gray told authorities soon after his son was flagged by the FBI.
He added that his son had been desperate to move schools. “He’s going through a lot… It was very difficult for him to go to school and not get picked on,” he said in a newly revealed transcript.
The suspect’s family leapt to his defence on Thursday after police said he would be charged with the murder of four people as an adult, threatening to go “full throttle” on social media.
However, details of the Gray family’s troubled history have since emerged.
Colt’s mother, Marcee, 43, has a lengthy criminal record, having been arrested for drug, domestic violence and motoring offences. She also served time in jail.
Warrants were issued last November after drugs were found in her car and in April, she was reportedly charged with aggravated battery of a 73-year-old woman.
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Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, called the shooting a “senseless tragedy”, while Joe Biden, the president, said he and his wife Jill were “mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short”.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, wrote on social media: “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”
There have been at least 36 school shootings in the US this year, according to CNN.
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