The teenager accused of executing a mass shooting at a Georgia high school made his first court appearance on Friday. The suspect’s father made a separate court appearance following his son’s hearing.
The mother of the 14-year-old suspect in a deadly shooting at a Georgia high school was arrested last year on family violence charges, court records show — the latest indication the teen accused of killing four people had a turbulent home life.
Colt Gray’s mother, Marcee Gray, pleaded guilty in December to second-degree criminal damage of property and criminal trespass-family violence, Barrow County court records show.
She also had warrants out for her arrest stemming from a November 2023 incident in which drugs, including methamphetamine and fentanyl, were found in her car, according to warrants obtained by NBC News.
Those details emerged Friday after the shooting suspect’s father, Colin Gray, was arrested on allegations that he allowed his son to possess a weapon. The 54-year-old bought his son an AR-15-style rifle as a gift, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.
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Both father and son appeared in court for the first time Friday.
The son is accused of fatally shooting two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School, where he was a new student, on his first full day of classes, authorities said.
His father faces 14 charges, including involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and cruelty to children. He faces up to 180 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
The student victims of Wednesday’s shooting are Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, who were both 14. Math teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, were also killed.
At the suspected gunman’s last school, he was ridiculed so often that he asked to change school districts, his father said, according to transcripts of an interview he did in May 2023 with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office over allegations that his son had made online threats to carry out a school shooting.
After the interview last year, the teen was not arrested because he could not be tied to an online account from which the threats were made, legal documents show.
He had 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 information came as a result of the searches conducted in the investigation into the shooting.
At home, the teen struggled after his parents separated and after his family was evicted from their home, which split him from his two younger siblings, the transcripts show.
“He’s gone through a lot,” Colin Gray told the Jackson County Sheriff’s investigator in May 2023, when his son was being investigated over the threat allegations.
In two interviews with the investigator last year, Colin Gray revealed his son was having a tough time dealing with challenges at home and at school. He did not express concerns that his son would carry out a massacre.
Colin Gray said his son denied the claim and said he did not want to be “caught up in any of that.”
“He’s like, ‘I’m a good boy, daddy. I would never do it,’” the father told the investigator. “I feel bad for him because all that stuff happened.”
Colin Gray said his son was “picked on” and physically pinched by his classmates at his last middle school. The apparent bullying prompted the father to speak with the school’s administrators multiple times out of his own frustration.
“I don’t want him to fight anybody, but they just keep, like, pinching him and touching him,” he said, according to the transcript. “Words are one thing, but you start touching him and that’s a whole different deal.”
Colin Gray said the conflict “escalated.” He said his son, who gets “flustered” under pressure, couldn’t focus on his finals and said he wanted to move out of the school district.
“He should be excited about getting into eighth grade,” his father said. “It was just very difficult for him to go to school.”
In response to questions from the investigator, Colin Gray said he had weapons at home that were accessible to his son but they were not loaded.
Colin Gray said he would have been “mad as hell” and would have taken all the guns away if he found out his son did indeed make those online threats.
The father said he introduced his son to bow hunting and then eventually advanced to firearms.
He said his son shot his first deer in 2023. He said he has a photo of that moment, showing the boy with blood on his cheeks.
Colin Gray indicated that his son’s mother was involved in “a lot of crap.”
After the family violence charges, Marcee Gray was ordered to have no contact with Colin Gray, except through a third party and on matters that involved the children or a divorce, records show.
Marcee Gray could not be immediately reached for comment.
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