Newz(AP) — Teenager gets life in prison without parole for killing two students and two teachers at Georgia’s Apalachee High School. A judge on Tuesday sentenced a teenager who killed two students and two teachers in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colt Gray, 16, had pleaded guilty Friday to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept.
4, 2024, shooting that also left several others wounded at the school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm handed down the sentence after hearing from family members of those killed and victims, as well as the lead investigator, a forensic psychologist who had evaluated Gray, a youth detention center counselor and Gray’s grandmother. Gray, who was 14 at the time, was charged as an adult.
Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire. Gray’s father, Colin Gray was convicted in March on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
He is scheduled to be sentenced later this week. Prosecutors said he gave his son the assault-style rifle used to open fire at the school. A prosecutor said that a teenager who killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia carefully plotted the killing specifically to become famous, while a defense attorney argued that the terrible actions were those of a vulnerable and neglected child.
Colt Gray, 16, pleaded guilty last week to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept. The minimum penalty for murder in Georgia is life with the possibility of parole. That leaves Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm trying to decide whether Gray should ever be eligible for parole.
District Attorney Brad Smith told the judge that Gray “cannot be in society.” “We’ve seen no evidence he has any ability to develop a conscience or any ability ever to fully value human life,” Smith said. Charlton Allen told the judge his client is “not irretrievably broken.” Giving him the possibility of parole would give him “an opportunity of hope,” Allen said, adding that without hop… Gray had chatted online about gaining notoriety through a school shooting and his admiration for previous mass shooters.Prosecutors played recordings of phone conversations Gray had with his mother, Marcee Gray, from a youth detention center in the months after the shooting.
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