Georgia school shooting suspect expected to face more charges as accounts of students’ heroism emerge
WANF, WXIA, CNN
By Dalia Faheid, CNN
(CNN) — A 14-year-old student charged with four counts of murder after a mass shooting earlier this week at Apalachee High School is expected to face additional charges in connection with the injured victims, officials said Friday.
As authorities mull more charges and examine the case, a small Georgia community is grieving the two students and two teachers who died Wednesday in the 45th school shooting of 2024 – and the deadliest US school shooting since the March 2023 massacre at The Covenant School in Nashville.
In the days since the tragic attack, Apalachee students have given harrowing accounts of the courageous actions they took to protect their classmates and teachers in the face of senseless violence.
In one classroom, a 14-year-old said she kept the suspect from getting through the door when she saw him pull out a gun. And after a teacher in another classroom was shot, students say they pulled him back inside and used the shirts off their backs to try and stop his bleeding while barricading the door with desks and chairs. Even with a gunshot wound, one teenage boy said he raced to close the classroom door to prevent the shooter from entering.
Victims’ families wiped away tears or clutched stuffed animals as they sat in the Barrow County courtroom Friday during Colt Gray’s arraignment, where he declined to enter a plea to the charges against him.
Prosecutors allege Gray fired an AR-style rifle on campus Wednesday morning, killing four people. Nine others were injured, all but two of whom were shot, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
Because of his young age, the maximum penalty Gray could face is life in prison with or without parole, Judge Currie Mingledorff told the teenager in court. In 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled no one can be put to death for crimes committed before the age of 18.
Gray’s father, Colin Gray, 54, faces a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison for four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
An arrest warrant for Colin Gray alleges he gave his son a firearm “with knowledge he was a threat to himself and others.” He declined to enter a plea at his first court appearance Friday, and neither him nor his son have asked for bond to be set at their hearings.
“I’m just trying to use the tools in my arsenal to prosecute people for the crimes they commit,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said.
Smith said he expects additional charges will be filed against Colt Gray in connection with victims who were injured during the shooting. Authorities on Thursday said all nine people wounded in Wednesday’s shooting are expected to make a full recovery.
“When he was taken into custody on Wednesday, we did not have the identities or the conditions of the other victims. So we were not able to charge on those offenses,” Smith said. “So when evidence comes in, and they’ve had a chance to heal physically, emotionally and spiritually, we will get with them, and there will be additional charges that address the other victims.”
The next step in the case against Gray will be a grand jury meeting on October 17. This will be followed by a scheduled arraignment before the trial process is started, Smith said. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for December 4, Mingledorff said.
Here’s what we know so far:
• Suspect will be tried as an adult: Colt Gray, who is being held at the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, is slated to remain there while in custody until he turns 17, Glenn Allen, the agency’s spokesperson, told CNN Thursday. Under Georgia law, a juvenile aged 13 to 17 who commits a serious crime is automatically tried as an adult.
• The four people killed: The shooting at Apalachee High School claimed the lives of two 14-year-old students – Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, as well as two teachers – 53-year-old math teacher Cristina Irimie and 39-year-old assistant football coach Richard Aspinwall, who also taught math. Authorities say Irimie was celebrating her birthday with her students the day she was shot and killed, according to a family friend.
• Nine injured are expected to make a full recovery: Of the nine other people injured, seven of them – six students and a teacher – were shot, the GBI said Thursday. The other two – both students – suffered other injuries, the GBI said.
• Suspect was questioned about online threats: In May 2023, law enforcement officials questioned Colt Gray and his father about “online threats to commit a school shooting” that included photos of guns, according to a joint statement from FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. Colt Gray, who was 13 at the time, told investigators during that interview 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,” authorities said. Authorities could not substantiate the threats and the investigation was closed, according to the sheriff’s office.
• Suspect’s father gifted him the gun involved in shooting: Two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation said Colin Gray told authorities he purchased the AR-style rifle used in the school shooting as a holiday present for his son in December 2023 – just months after authorities initially contacted the father about the online threats.
• Suspect had writings on past school shootings: During questioning, Gray told investigators “I did it.” As authorities searched his home, they found documents that they believe he wrote referencing past school shootings, including references to the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, a law enforcement source told CNN.
Student says she didn’t open the door after spotting a gun
Bri Jones, 14, was in second period Wednesday when Colt Gray left the classroom, Jones said. “We didn’t notice he left,” Jones said, adding that Gray was “always quiet.”
But Gray came back and knocked on the door, Jones said.
Bri said she peeked out the door before she opened it because that’s what her mom taught her to do.
“As I was looking at the door, he was pulling his gun out, and then I froze up, like I froze up and I said ‘no’ to myself,” she told CNN’s Isabel Rosales.
The teacher asked for the door to be opened, Bri said, “because she didn’t know he had a gun because she was at her desk.” As she went the open the door, “I was like, ‘no, he has a gun,’” Jones said.
Then, the shooter looked up at them before turning and firing shots, Jones said.
“He was looking at me, my teacher, and then somebody was in the hall,” she said. “He turned his head and he just started shooting.”
The students then ran to the back of the class and the teacher turned off the lights, Bri said.
“Once he started shooting, it’s like he kept going, it was so many gunshots after gunshots,” she said. “It felt like he was just shooting forever.”
If she had opened the class door, Bri said she believes the suspect “would have got every single one of us in that class.”
Another student, 14-year-old Ronaldo Vega, immediately took cover under his desk when the shooting began in his second-period math class, he said. Ronaldo was injured amid the four to six shots fired, but he still stood up quickly to close the classroom door so the shooter “couldn’t come back,” he said.
Only after seeing one of the bullets behind the teacher’s desk did he realize he had been shot and was bleeding, Ronaldo recounted.
Students took the shirts off their backs to try to save their math teacher
Richard Aspinwall, a math teacher, heard commotion outside his classroom and entered the hallway to see what was going on. When he did, he was shot in the chest by the 14-year-old suspect, according to family friend Julie Woodson, who cited accounts by Aspinwall’s students.
“We had to watch our teacher come back in the classroom holding himself like he’s been shot, and fell to the floor,” 17-year-old Malasia Mitchell said. “And as he kept going, my teacher was shot again.”
Students in the class say they pulled Aspinwall back into the classroom and used the shirts off their backs to try and stop their teacher’s bleeding, according to Woodson.
Meanwhile, the students closed the door and protected themselves with desks and chairs, Mitchell said.
Woodson said Aspinwall “died as a hero trying to save his students’ lives.”
“If he didn’t walk out and take the bullet … who knows what would’ve happened,” Woodson said.
Malasia remembered her teacher as a “great guy” with “such a happy spirit” — someone who wouldn’t want her to ever give up.
“He wouldn’t want me to just stop coming to school,” she said. “He would want me to keep going.”
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CNN’s Ashley R. Williams, Holly Yan, Mark Morales, Ryan Young, Isabel Rosales, Chelsea Bailey, Sara Smart, Jaide Timm-Garcia, Raja Razek, Jade Gordon and PJ Steve Sorg contributed to this report.
