1st court appearance for school shooting suspect Colt Gray set for Friday

ATLANTA — The 14-year-old suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting is scheduled to make his first appearance in Barrow County Superior Court on Friday morning, state officials confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Colt Gray is accused of shooting two of his fellow students and two teachers at the school Wednesday morning. Nine others were injured.

Gray, who faces murder charges, is being held in the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice spokesperson Glenn Allen confirmed. Gray is expected to be tried as an adult.

Friday’s 8:30 a.m. hearing will be virtual, with the teenager calling in from the detention center, Allen said.

Two of the victims were identified by the GBI as students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14. The two adults killed were assistant football coach Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and math teacher Christina Irimie, 53. Officials said nine others were injured.

No one answered the door at Gray’s home Thursday, though a pickup truck was visible in the open garage. The house is about six miles from Apalachee High.

A Christmas wreath still hung on the front door. There were no law enforcement officers, signs or police tape to indicate that the property had been searched by the FBI the day before, though a sheriff’s office patrol car cruised by the house around 10 a.m. Thursday.

Late Wednesday, the FBI said Gray had previously been investigated. In May 2023, the agency received several anonymous tips about threats to commit a school shooting that had been posted to an online gaming site, officials said. The threats did not specify which school or when it would happen, but photos of guns were included.

Federal and local law enforcement tracked the post to Jackson County, where sheriff’s deputies continued the investigation, which led them to Gray, who was 13 at the time.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them,” the FBI said. “The subject denied making the threats online.”

With the information investigators had at the time, there was no legal basis to pursue any charges, the FBI said. But the Jackson sheriff’s office alerted local schools, and Gray was monitored, the FBI added.

What resulted from that monitoring has not been disclosed by officials.

— Staff writer Henri Hollis contributed to this article.