3 months ago
15
Georgia school shooting suspect
Colt Gray
appeared in the court Friday for the first time and was warned of life sentence if convicted. The 14-year-old allegedly massacred two students and two teachers in the most deadly mass shooting in the recent years. Colt Gray and his father Colin Gray faced a judge at the Barrow Country Courthouse for their arraignment.
Colt is being tried as an adult in the case.
Colt Gray is accused of opening fire of staff and students at Apalachee High School with an AR-style rifle which his father allegedly bought for Christmas present.
Colin Gray could receive a maximum sentencing of 180 years in prison -- 30 years for each of the two counts of felony murder in second degree, 10 years in jail for each of the four counts of felony involuntary manslaughter, and 10 years years for each of the eight counts of felony cruelty to children in the second degree.
Colt's lawyer declined to seek bail.
'2023 threat to school shooting'
Colin and Colt were interviewed by the law enforcement in May 2023 in connection with threats to carry out a school shooting. At that time, Colt was not arrested because the officers could not link him to an online account that made the threats. The teenage suspect had also shown interest in prior mass shootings, particularly the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office interviewed the teenager and his father after the FBI received a tip in May 2023 from a user on Discord, a chat platform popular with online video game enthusiasts, about online threats to commit a shooting at a middle school, according to investigative documents cited by NBC.
The FBI traced the Discord account to a person with the same name as the teen’s father and referred the case to the sheriff’s department in Jackson County, where the teen was enrolled at Jefferson Middle School, according to the documents.
The teen at that time denied making any online threats and “expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” the documents stated.
