ATLANTA — A decide has set a plea and sentencing listening to later this month for a youngster accused of killing 4 folks in a September 2024 capturing at Apalachee Excessive College in Georgia.
Colt Grey, 16, had pleaded not responsible to prices together with homicide within the capturing that killed two college students and two academics, and left a number of others wounded, at the highschool northeast of Atlanta.
In a courtroom submitting Friday, the decide overseeing his case set a “Non-Negotiated Plea and Sentencing Listening to” to start July 24. The decide had beforehand mentioned that if Grey needed to plead responsible forward of trial, he should notify the state and courtroom by this coming Wednesday.
A non-negotiated plea signifies that the state and the protection haven’t reached an settlement on a sentence.
In contrast to a negotiated plea, or plea deal, the place a defendant reaches an settlement with prosecutors to plead responsible in change for an agreed-upon sentence and presumably diminished prices, this leaves sentencing solely as much as the decide, who comes to a decision after giving either side an opportunity to current a abstract of the case and a sentencing advice.
Colt Grey’s lawyer didn’t instantly reply to an e-mail searching for remark Sunday.
Grey’s trial had been set to start in mid-October in Columbia County, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Barrow County, the place the capturing occurred, after the decide agreed to a protection request to alter the venue.
Grey’s father, Colin Grey, was convicted by a jury in March on prices together with second-degree homicide and involuntary manslaughter after prosecutors mentioned he gave his teenage son the assault-style rifle used to open hearth on the faculty. The elder Grey is ready to be sentenced later this month.
The Sept. 4, 2024, capturing killed academics Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and college students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, each 14.
Barrow County College System
One other instructor and eight extra college students had been wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire. Colt Grey, who was 14 on the time of the capturing, was charged as an grownup with 55 whole counts, together with homicide, cruelty to kids, and 25 counts of aggravated assault.
Investigators testified that Colt Grey carried the rifle given to him by his father onto the college bus with the barrel wrapped in a poster board. They mentioned {the teenager} left his second-period class and emerged from a rest room with the rifle, capturing folks in a classroom and hallway.
Investigators have mentioned {the teenager} rigorously plotted the capturing at the highschool of 1,900 college students. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified that the boy left a pocket book in his classroom with step-by-step directions and a diagram to organize for the assault, together with an estimate that he might kill as many as 26 folks and wound as many as 13 others.
Colt and Colin Grey had been interviewed by sheriff’s deputies about a web-based menace linked to Colt Grey in Might 2023. Colt Grey denied making the menace on the time. He skipped eighth grade, enrolled as a freshman at Apalachee after the educational 12 months started, after which skipped a number of days of college.
Relations had been searching for psychological assist for Colt Grey earlier than the capturing, but it surely appeared he by no means noticed a counselor.
Colt’s mom, Marcee Grey, who was separated from Colin Grey, instructed investigators that she had argued with Colin Grey weeks earlier than the capturing, asking him to safe his weapons and limit Colt’s entry. As a substitute, over time, he purchased the boy ammunition, a gun sight, and different capturing equipment, information present.
Colt Grey even created a shrine in his bed room to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter within the 2018 bloodbath at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College, prosecutors mentioned.
