WINDER, Ga. (AP) — The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting that killed four people at a Georgia high school and his father, who was arrested for allowing his son to possess a gun, will remain in custody after their attorneys decided Friday not to request bail.

Colt Gray, who has been charged with four counts of murder, is accused of using a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. His father, Colin Gray, faces related charges in the latest effort by prosecutors to hold parents accountable for their children’s actions in school shootings.

“You don’t have to be physically injured to be a victim,” District Attorney Brad Smith said outside the Barrow County courthouse. “Everybody in this community is a victim. Every kid in that school was a victim.”

The father and son appeared in back-to-back hearings Friday morning with about 50 spectators in the courtroom, where workers had placed boxes of tissues along the benches, along with members of the media and sheriff’s deputies. Some family members of victims in the front row hugged each other, and one woman held a stuffed animal.

During his interrogation, Colt Gray, dressed in khaki pants and a green shirt, was informed of his rights and the charges and punishments he faced for the shooting at the school where he was a student. He was escorted out with shackles around his wrists and ankles.

The judge then called the teen back into court to correct an earlier misconception that his crimes could be punishable by death. Because he is a minor, the maximum sentence he would receive is life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Shortly afterwards, Colin Gray was brought before the court, dressed in a grey striped prison uniform. Colin Gray, 54, was charged on Thursday in connection with the shooting and answered questions in a barely audible hoarse voice. He gave his age and said he had completed the 11th grade and had earned a high school-equivalent diploma.

Colin Gray has been accused with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder in connection with the shooting. Arrest warrants said he caused the deaths of others “by providing a firearm to Colt Gray with the knowledge that he posed a threat to himself and others.”

The charges come five months after Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted of mass school shooting in USThey were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not keeping a firearm at home and for being indifferent to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health. he killed four students in 2021The shootings in Georgia have also renewed debate over safe storage laws for guns and parents wonder how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma.

The hearings for the father and son came as police in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody said schools there and across the country have received threats of violence since the Apalachee High School 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.

According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a “black semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle.” in the frenzyAuthorities have not given a motive or explained how he obtained the weapon or got it into the school.

He was charged as an adult in the dead of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. A neighbor remembered Schermerhorn as a curious person as a young boy. Aspinwall and Irimie were both math teachers, and Aspinwall also helped coach the school’s soccer team. Irimie, who immigrated from Romania, volunteered at a local church, where she taught dance.

Additional charges will be filed against Colt Gray, Smith said. When the teen was taken into custody Wednesday, authorities did not know who the nine people wounded in the attack were, so they initially could not file charges, he said.

Colt Gray denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities questioned him about a threatening social media post last year, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday. Conflicting evidence about the origin of the post prevented investigators from making an arrest, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing that would have supported charges at the time.

The attack was the latest in a string of dozens of school shootings in the US in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; And Uvalde, TexasThe classroom killings have sparked heated debates about gun control, but little has changed in the nation’s gun laws.

It was the 30th mass murder in the US so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in cooperation with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in these 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.

The cases will be presented to a grand jury, which will next meet on Oct. 17, Smith said. Grand jury proceedings are not public or open to the news media. If the grand jury issues indictments for Colt and Colin Gray, they will then be scheduled for arraignment. Colt Gray will have another hearing on Dec. 4.

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Martin reported from Atlanta. Associated Press reporters 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.