WINDER, Ga. (AP) — The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting at a Georgia high school that killed four people and his father will both stay in custody following back-to-back court hearings Friday morning where their lawyers declined to seek bail.

At 14-year-old Colt Gray’s hearing, the teen was advised of his rights along with the charges and penalties he faced.

After the hearing, Colt Gray was escorted out in shackles at the wrists and ankles in khaki pants and a green shirt. The judge then called Colt Gray back to the courtroom to correct an earlier misstatement that his crimes could be punishable by death. Because he’s a juvenile, the maximum penalty he would face is life without parole. The judge also set another hearing for Dec. 4.

WATCH: Students mourn 4 killed in Georgia school shooting as investigators explore past threats

Shortly after Colt Gray’s hearing, his father, Colin Gray, was brought into court. Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. Nine people were also hurt in Wednesday’s attack.

Colin Gray, dressed in a gray-striped jail uniform at Friday’s hearing, answered questions in a barely audible croak, giving his age and saying he finished 11th grade, earning a high school equivalency diploma.

About 50 onlookers were in the courtroom for the hearings, in addition to news media and sheriff’s deputies. Some family members of victims in the front row hugged each other and one woman clutched a stuffed animal.

Before the hearings at the Barrow County courthouse, court workers set out boxes of tissue along courtroom benches, and relatives and community members began to trickle into the courtroom Friday morning in advance of the hearings for the son and father.

READ MORE: Father of 14-year-old Georgia school shooting suspect arrested on multiple charges

According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” to kill two students and two teachers at the school. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun or got it into the school.

Colin Gray 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 said.

“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey said.

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. The Georgia shootings have also renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and have parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma.

The morning court hearings for the father and son came as police in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody said schools there and nationwide have received threats of violence since the Georgia shooting, police said in a statement. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also noted that numerous threats have been made to schools across the state this week.

Before Colin Gray’s arrest was reported, the AP knocked on the door of a home listed for him seeking comment about his son’s arrest.

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.

Colt Gray 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 to this report.

Two students and two teachers were killed and nine people injured in Wednesday’s high school shooting.

The father of the 14-year-old boy suspected of shooting dead four people and injuring nine more in a Georgia school has been arrested.

State officials said Colin Gray knowingly allowed his son Colt to have the weapon he used in Wednesday’s attack.

Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said.

“These charges stem from Mr Gray knowingly allowing his son Colt to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, director of the GBI, told a news conference.

Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of murder and officials have said he will be tried as an adult. He is due to appear in court by video camera on Friday morning.

Two 14-year-old students and two teachers were killed in the attack on the Apalachee High School in Winder, northeast of Atlanta, reviving a long-running US debate on gun control.

Investigators say the younger Gray used an “AR platform style weapon”, or semiautomatic rifle, to carry out the shooting.

It remained unclear exactly how the teenager came into possession of the weapon.

Citing unnamed sources, CNN reported that the gun, which it described as an AR 15-style assault rifle, had been bought for the teenager by his father as a holiday gift.

“The investigation into the shooting at Apalachee HS is still active [and] ongoing,” the GBI said in a post on social media platform X.

Parental responsibility

Officials identified the two students killed as Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. The two teachers were Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Nine people were injured, seven of them students. All are expected to make a full recovery.

Parental responsibility in mass shootings, particularly those carried out by minors, has come increasingly under the spotlight in recent months.

“How could you have an assault rifle, a weapon in a house, not locked up and knowing your kid knows where it is?” President Joe Biden told reporters on Thursday.

“You’ve got to hold parents accountable if they let their child have access to these guns.”

In April, the mother and father of a Michigan teen were sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in prison when a jury convicted them of manslaughter after their son shot and killed four classmates. It was believed to be the first time parents had been held legally responsible for their child’s actions in a school shooting.

Experts and gun safety advocates said the Michigan case was an important step in holding gun-owning parents more accountable for gun violence carried out by their children.

Studies by the US Department of Homeland Security have shown that about 75 percent of all school attackers got their weapons from home.

The United States has seen hundreds of shootings inside schools and colleges in the past two decades. The carnage has intensified the debate over gun laws and the US Constitution’s Second Amendment “to keep and bear arms”.

The father of the 14-year-old accused of shooting and killing two teachers and two students was arrested in connection to the deadly Georgia school shooting that rocked the small community.

Colin Gray, the father of the 14-year-old suspect, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in connection, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) announced Thursday.

In addition to two counts of second-degree murder, 54-year-old Gray was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, according to the GBI.

He was arrested on Wednesday, the GBI announced during a press conference on Thursday evening.

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The Director of the GBI, Chris Hosey, said that this was a “difficult” time for the community.

VIDEOS TAKEN INSIDE APALACHEE HIGH SCHOOL SHOW GUN, ORDERED EVACUATIONS

“This is a very difficult time, as we know, for students and parents and so many students and parents here in this county and around this state are afraid,” he said. “You all have likely seen reports of incidents of other students making threats today at various schools around our state. In each of these incidents, police law enforcement took charges, and they made arrests, acted very swiftly as we take incidents like this very seriously across this state.”

People attend a vigil at Jug Tavern Park following a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, U.S. September 4, 2024.  (REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage)

Hosey encouraged the community to “come together and remain vigilant” in the wake of the deadly mass shooting.

“This is a time for all of us as a community and a state, to come together and remain vigilant,” he said. “Students must be supported and encouraged here in this community and across the state to contact a member of their school faculty with any and all concerns of suspicious activity that they may see.” 

“Local, state and federal law enforcement will continue to work together around the clock in relation to this incident here and any other incidents that come up around this state that raise concern for the safety of our students, faculty and citizens here in the State of Georgia.”

From left to right: Math teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie were killed at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, along with Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, officials say. (Fox News)

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith announced that of the nine injured, which included 2 teachers and 7 students, all would make a full recovery. 

Smith implored the audience to “lift up our community.”

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“Please keep these children, these teachers,” he said. “We call them teachers, but I call them heroes.”