Georgia | First appearance for the boy who killed four people at his school

(Washington) The 14-year-old American teenager who killed four people by opening fire in his secondary school appeared before a judge on Friday to be informed of the charges against him.

Colt Gray, his limbs shackled, appeared in court in a televised hearing two days after killing two teachers and two middle school students at Apalachee Elementary School in Winder. He also injured nine others at the school about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta.

Charged with four murders, he is being prosecuted as an adult despite his young age. His father, accused of allowing his son free access to the assault rifle he had given him, also appeared in court Friday. He is also charged with murder, as well as involuntary manslaughter.

The slender teenager, with a face framed by a thick head of blond hair, nodded and answered questions from Judge Currie Mingledorff, who was presiding over the hearing.

The magistrate initially told the teenager that he was facing the death penalty, before later correcting himself by explaining that this sentence could not be applied because he was underage.

His father, Colin Gray, appeared in court shortly afterwards, wearing a striped prison jumpsuit. The 54-year-old faces a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison.

He is accused of ignoring multiple warning signs about his son. In May 2023, two police officers went to the family home, alerted by the FBI, who had noticed messages being sent from the home’s internet address threatening a school shooting.

Part of a litany of similar tragedies across the United States, the tragedy at the Apalachee school in Winder briefly reignited debate over the devastation caused by the hundreds of millions of guns circulating in the country, two months before the presidential election.

Unsurprisingly, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump repeated their respective parties’ traditional positions on the issue.

The Democratic candidate called for an end to “the epidemic of gun violence once and for all.” Her Republican rival denounced the isolated act of a “sick and deranged monster.”