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Alleged Georgia school shooter and father indicted on dozens of charges by grand jury
A grand jury handed down dozens of charges Thursday for the alleged Apalachee High School shooter and his father, also accused in connection with the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history.
New charges against 14-year-old Colt Gray include 4 counts of “malice murder,” 22 counts of aggravated assault and 18 counts of cruelty to children in the first degree. He faces a total of 55 counts.
District Attorney Brad Smith said the indictment includes charges related not only to victims who were killed and physically injured, but the people who were in the room the alleged shooter entered and those in the hallway.
“You had an entire county that was affected by this,” Smith told CBS News on Thursday. “All of them are victims in certain ways.”
Four people — two students and two teachers — were killed and nine others were wounded in the September shooting at the high school in Winder, Georgia.
They are expected in court for their arraignment on Nov. 21, when they are anticipated to enter their pleas. The alleged shooter is being charged as an adult, and could face life in prison.
Neither his attorney nor the attorney for his father Colin Gray responded to CBS News’s request for comment.
Colin Gray, 54, faces 29 counts, including second-degree murder, second-degree cruelty to children, involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct.
The indictment and new charges come one day after chilling new details about Colt Gray’s alleged plans were revealed in testimony from investigators at a hearing Wednesday where a judge determined the case could go forward against the alleged shooter’s father.
During Wednesday’s hearing, authorities revealed details from the alleged shooter’s notebooks that included detailed plans of the attack as well as violent drawings. Witnesses testified Colin Gray knew of his son’s struggles with his mental health but purchased a laser sight, tactical vest and ammunition for him in the months leading up to the shooting.
Investigators also said that the alleged shooter made a “shrine” to school shooters in his room, and hung a picture of the Parkland shooter, who killed 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Their testimony revealed his father was aware of his obsession with school shooters, and that the teenager had even discussed the Parkland shooting with his grandmother around a week before the shooting.
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Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia’s unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.
In a rambling, misspelled message on his Instagram account, Polunin wrote: “My time in Russia ran out a long time ago, it seems at this moment that I have fulfilled my mission here.”
The post first appeared Sunday on his little-read Telegram account.
Ian Gavan/Getty
Polunin, 35, did not give a specific reason for leaving but said that “a time comes when the soul feels it is not where it should be.”
He said he was leaving with his family — his wife Yelena and three children — but “where we will go is not clear so far.”
In the summer, the dancer complained of a lack of security and said he was being followed.
Polunin, who was born in Ukraine, backed Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — a prelude to the ongoing, full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin launched in February 2022.
The dancer was granted Russian citizenship in 2019. He was appointed acting head of a dance academy in occupied Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, and director of the city’s opera and ballet theatre, for which a large new building is under construction.
Just last year he was decorated by Putin for his role in popularizing dance. But in August he was replaced as head of the dance academy by former Bolshoi prima Maria Alexandrova, and a week ago, Russia’s arts minister Olga Lyubimova announced his theater director job would go to singer Ildar Abdrazakov.
This came after on December 9 Polunin published a social media post saying he was “very sorry for people” living in the heavily bombarded village near Ukraine’s city of Kherson, where his family originates from, and that “the worst deal would be better than war.”
Ian Gavan/Getty
Aged 13, Polunin won a scholarship to train at the Royal Ballet School in London and became its youngest ever principal dancer.
With his tattoos — including a large depiction of Putin’s face emblazoned prominently on his chest — and his rebellious attitude, he became known as the “bad boy of ballet” and caused a sensation by resigning from the Royal Ballet at the height of his fame in 2012.
Later he made a 2015 hit video to Irish musician Hozier’s song “Take Me to Church” and was the star of a 2016 documentary called “Dancer.”
He moved to perform at Moscow’s Stanislavsky Musical Theatre’s ballet before launching a solo career, starring in dance performances in roles including the mystic Grigory Rasputin.
In 2019 he posed for AFP with a large tattoo of Putin on his chest which he later supplemented with two Putin faces on either shoulder. He also has a large Ukrainian trident on his right hand.
This year he took part in Putin’s campaign for reelection as a celebrity backer.
