The 14-year-old ac­cused of fa­tal­ly shoot­ing four peo­ple at his high school in Geor­gia was ex­pect­ed to make his first court ap­pear­ance Fri­day, a day af­ter his fa­ther was al­so ar­rest­ed for al­low­ing his son to have a weapon.

Ac­cord­ing to ar­rest war­rants ob­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, Colt Gray is ac­cused of us­ing a semi­au­to­mat­ic as­sault-style ri­fle to kill two stu­dents and two teach­ers at Apalachee High School in Winder, out­side At­lanta. Nine peo­ple were al­so hurt in Wednes­day’s at­tack. Au­thor­i­ties have not of­fered any mo­tive or ex­plained how Gray ob­tained the gun or got it in­to the school.

The teen’s fa­ther, Col­in Gray, 54, was charged Thurs­day in con­nec­tion with the shoot­ing, in­clud­ing with counts of in­vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter and sec­ond-de­gree mur­der, Geor­gia Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion Di­rec­tor Chris Hosey.

“His charges are di­rect­ly con­nect­ed with the ac­tions of his son and al­low­ing him to pos­sess a weapon,” Hosey said. Col­in Gray’s first court ap­pear­ance has not been set.

It’s the lat­est ex­am­ple of pros­e­cu­tors hold­ing par­ents re­spon­si­ble for their chil­dren’s ac­tions in school shoot­ings. In April, Michi­gan par­ents Jen­nifer and James Crum­b­ley were the first con­vict­ed in a U.S. mass school shoot­ing. They were sen­tenced to at least 10 years in prison for not se­cur­ing a firearm at home and act­ing in­dif­fer­ent­ly to signs of their son’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing men­tal health be­fore he killed four stu­dents in 2021.

Colt Gray was charged as an adult with four counts of mur­der in the deaths of Ma­son Scher­mer­horn and Chris­t­ian An­gu­lo, both 14, Richard As­pin­wall, 39, and Cristi­na Ir­im­ie, 53.

A neigh­bor re­mem­bered Scher­mer­horn as in­quis­i­tive when he was a lit­tle boy. As­pin­wall and Ir­im­ie were both math teach­ers, and As­pin­wall al­so helped coach the school’s foot­ball team. Ir­im­ie, who im­mi­grat­ed from Ro­ma­nia, vol­un­teered at a lo­cal church, where she taught dance.

Gray will ap­pear by video from a youth de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty for the pro­ceed­ings at the Bar­row Coun­ty cour­t­house.

The teen de­nied threat­en­ing to car­ry out a school shoot­ing when au­thor­i­ties in­ter­viewed him last year about a men­ac­ing post on so­cial me­dia, ac­cord­ing to a sher­iff’s re­port ob­tained Thurs­day.

Con­flict­ing ev­i­dence on the post’s ori­gin left in­ves­ti­ga­tors un­able to ar­rest any­one, the re­port said. Jack­son Coun­ty Sher­iff Ja­nis Mangum said she re­viewed the re­port from May 2023 and found noth­ing that would have jus­ti­fied bring­ing charges at the time.

The at­tack was the lat­est among dozens of school shoot­ings across the U.S. in re­cent years, in­clud­ing es­pe­cial­ly dead­ly ones in New­town, Con­necti­cut; Park­land, Flori­da; and Uvalde, Texas. The class­room killings have set off fer­vent de­bates about gun con­trol but there has been lit­tle change to na­tion­al gun laws.

It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, ac­cord­ing to a data­base main­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press and USA To­day in part­ner­ship with North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. At least 127 peo­ple have died in those killings, which are de­fined as events in which four or more peo­ple die with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od, not in­clud­ing the killer — the same de­f­i­n­i­tion used by the FBI.

Mar­tin re­port­ed from At­lanta. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Char­lotte Kra­mon, Sharon John­son, Mike Stew­art and Erik Ver­duz­co in Winder; Tren­ton Daniel and Beat­rice Dupuy in New York; Er­ic Tuck­er in Wash­ing­ton; Russ Bynum in Sa­van­nah, Geor­gia; Kate Brum­back in At­lanta; and Mark Thiessen in An­chor­age, Alas­ka, con­tributed.

By  JEFF AMY and JEFF MAR­TIN

WINDER, Ga. (AP)