Colt Gray: What we know about the 14-year-old school shooting suspect

Published

2 months ago

September 5, 2024

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A 14-year-old boy has been arrested after allegedly shooting dead two students and two teachers at a high school in the US.

A gunman opened fire at Apalachee High School in Georgia on Wednesday morning, leading dozens of police officers to swarm the campus as students and teachers rushed to an American football field for shelter.

Police have named the suspect, despite him being a minor, as Colt Gray.

Here’s what we know about the boy so far.

Gray is a student at Apalachee High School and was arrested at the scene of the shooting, according to Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Chris Hosey.

He said law enforcement officers and two school resource officers responded to reports of an active shooter within minutes.

One of the school officers confronted Gray and he surrendered immediately, Barrow County sheriff Jud Smith said, adding: “The shooter quickly realised that if he did not give up, it would end with an OIS [officer-involved shooting].”

The teen, who is currently in police custody, will be charged with murder and tried as an adult, the authorities said.

Sheriff Smith said a motive was unclear and that he did not know whether the victims were targeted or whether there was a connection between the gunman and the victims.

“I don’t know why it happened and we may never know,” he said.

The attack was carried out using an AR-style weapon – a lightweight semi-automatic rifle often associated with school shootings.

Gray had been investigated before

Gray was investigated by police over threats to carry out a similar attack last year, the FBI said in a statement on Wednesday.

They said they received several anonymous tips about someone using photos of guns online to make threats about committing a school shooting.

The FBI interviewed Gray, then 13, and his father, who stated he had hunting guns but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them.

Gray himself denied making the threats online and at the time there was no probable cause for arrest and no further action was taken, the statement said, adding that local schools were alerted “for continued monitoring of the subject”.

Authorities are now re-investigating the incident and any possible connection it may have to the most recent shooting.

After speaking about the FBI statement, Mr Hosey said: “We are also aware of some previous contacts that the Department of Family and Children Services had had with the suspect and his family, and we are pursuing that avenue as well.”

What we know about the victims

The four victims who died have been named as students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspenwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.

Christian was described as “a very good kid and very sweet and so caring” by his older sister, Lisette Angulo.

“He was so loved by many. His loss was so sudden and unexpected. We are truly heartbroken. He really didn’t deserve this,” she added.

Mr Aspenwall and Ms Irimie both taught maths, according to the school’s website, with the former also listed as a defensive coordinator for the football team.

Nine other people, eight students and one teacher, were injured in the attack. Authorities said they were all expected to make a recovery.

‘I didn’t want to die that way’

Witnesses have been talking about the traumatic incident while the investigation continues.

Student Camille Nelms said she was shedding tears when a gunman opened fire on her classroom.

As bullets came flying into her classroom, the teacher and students tried to take shelter in the corner.

“I was crying, I didn’t want to die that way,” Nelms told NBC affiliate WXIA of Atlanta. “I don’t want to meet the Lord that way.”

Student Jacob King said he had dozed off in his world history class after morning football practice when he heard around 10 gunshots.

He said he did not believe the shooting was real until he heard an officer yelling at someone to put down their gun. He said that when his class was led out, he saw officers shielding what appeared to be an injured student.

Ashley Enoh said she was at home on Wednesday morning when she got a text from her brother, who is a senior at the school.

The message said: “Just so you know, I love you.”

When she asked in the family group chat what was going on, he said there was a gunman at the school.

Shirley Power spoke to Sky News’ US partner NBC News about learning of the shooting at her grandchild’s school from her daughter.

“My daughter called me at work screaming that there was a shooter at Apalachee and begged me to get there as quick as possible,” Ms Powers said.

She said the principal instructed her grandson to run to the band room.

“Start praying, for all the kids, not just my grandson,” she added.

Authorities were alerted to the attack due to a new alarm system that had only been implemented a week earlier.

Sheriff Jud Smith said: “All of our teachers are armed with a form of ID, this alarms us and alerts law enforcement officers after buttons are pressed on the ID.

“It alerts us there is an active situation at the school. We’ve had that about a week now.”

Police said that the actions of teachers saved a number of lives.

On Wednesday night, local council member Power Evans spoke to hundreds of community members at a vigil in a local park.

“Whether you have a student, whether you’re the mother or father of a student, brother or sister, whether you’re a teacher, an Apalachee teacher, this all affects us,” he said.

“We may be a county of 90,000 people, but we’re still a small community, and when one of us hurts, we all hurt.”

Apalachee High School, which had almost 1,900 students last year, began term on 1 August.

Authorities said they were still chasing down a number of leads and carrying out investigations.

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

Published

4 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.

A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.

They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.

Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.

The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.

The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.

All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.

Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.

It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.

The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.

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COP29: UN climate summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, warn leading figures

Published

6 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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COP29: UN climate summits 'no longer fit for purpose', warn leading figures

UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.

An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.

The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.

“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.

“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”

The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.

It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.

Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.

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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.

This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.

Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.

While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.

COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.

Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.

In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.

“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.

Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.

“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.

“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”

Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.

Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.

“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.

“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.

“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”

COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.

Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners

Published

22 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to 'smoke out' thousands of illegal miners

A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.

The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.

Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.

It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.

The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.

Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.

A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.

It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.

Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.

In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.

Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.

Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.

The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.

Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.

Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.