A Georgia teenager charged in the Apalachee High School shooting has pleaded not guilty

ATLANTA – A 14-year-old Georgia boy charged with murder in the Apalachee High School mass shooting pleaded not guilty Tuesday.

Colt Gray’s lawyer filed documents as part of the lawsuit after Gray was arraigned on Thursday. They waived the arraignment hearing scheduled for November 21.

In Georgia, it is common for defendants to plead guilty and waive arraignment.

A Barrow County grand jury indicted Gray on a total of 55 charges as an adult, including murder in the deaths of four people and 25 counts of aggravated assault in the high school. A grand jury indicted his father, Colin Gray, on 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of manslaughter. Both also face multiple charges of cruelty to children.

As of Tuesday, Colin Gray had not yet entered a plea and remains scheduled for arraignment on November 21.

Colt Gray is in the Gainesville Juvenile Detention Center and Colin Gray, 54, is in the Barrow County Jail. Neither has sought bail, and their lawyers previously declined to comment.

Teachers Richard Aspinwall (39) and Cristina Irimie (53) and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo (14) were killed in the Sept. 4 shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were injured, and seven of them were hit by gunfire.

Colin Gray is the first adult charged with a school shooting in Georgia. His indictment is the latest example of prosecutors holding parents accountable for their children’s actions during school shootings. Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley, the first to be convicted in the US school mass shooting, were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to secure weapons at home and responding indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four people students in 2021

Investigators said Colt Gray carried a semi-automatic assault rifle onto a school bus with the barrel sticking out of a book bag and wrapped in a poster board. They say the boy carefully planned the shooting at the 1,900-student high school northeast of Atlanta, drawing diagrams and writing down the potential death toll in a notebook. He skipped second period and came out of the bathroom with a rifle and began shooting at people in the classroom and in the hallways.

The shooting occurred as school officials and Colt Gray’s family were considering enrolling him in counseling or even inpatient psychiatric treatment. His home life had long been unstable, and investigators say his mother, Marcee Gray, asked Colin Gray to secure his gun and restrict Colt’s access to firearms in the weeks before the shooting. Colin and Marcee Gray lived separately.

Colt Gray even created a “shrine” for school shooters on his home computer, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Kelsey Ward said in court, attaching a photo of Nikolas Cruz, the shooter who took part in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in Florida.