Bryan Kohberger granted new hearing in bid to take back guilty plea in Idaho murders: Court filings
Bryan Kohberger appears at the Ada County Courthouse for his sentencing hearing, July 23, 2025, in Boise, Idaho. (Kyle Green/Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Bryan Kohberger, who pleaded guilty last year to the University of Idaho quadruple murders, has been granted a new hearing in his bid to take back his guilty plea, according to court filings.
His new evidentiary hearing has been set for June 17, 2027.
In 2022, Kohberger was arrested for the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students — roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle, and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin — at the girls’ off-campus house.
In July 2025, weeks before his trial was set to start, Kohberger pleaded guilty to all counts. As part of the plea deal, the death penalty was taken off the table. Kohberger was given four consecutive life sentences for four first-degree murder counts as well as 10 years for the burglary count.
Last month, Kohberger reversed course, filing a petition for post-conviction relief. Without offering new evidence, Kohberger — a criminology student at Washington State University at the time of the murders — claimed he was lied to and pressured to falsely confess, and that there was information withheld that could have potentially helped his case.
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, enters the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance on Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (Photo by Brynn Anderson-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The father of a Georgia teenager who carried out a deadly mass shooting at his high school was sentenced to 15 years in prison for second-degree murder and other charges after a jury found him criminally culpable for the attack.
Colin Gray, 55, admitted to providing the assault rifle used by his then-14-year-old son in the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School, which killed two students and two teachers.
His son, 16-year-old Colt Gray, pleaded guilty to all 55 counts against him, including murder and aggravated assault. Judge Nicholas Primm sentenced him to life in prison without parole on Tuesday.
The teen’s father appeared in the Barrow County Courthouse before the same judge on Thursday to learn his fate. He faced more than 100 years in prison after being found guilty of 27 counts, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, cruelty to children in the second degree, and reckless conduct. The jury deliberated for fewer than two hours before returning the guilty verdicts in March.
Colin Gray is the latest parent to be charged and convicted in the U.S. in connection with a mass shooting carried out by their child. Judge Primm noted the novelty of the school shooting case, saying it’s the first of its kind in Georgia and the second he’s aware of in the nation.
“What we’re really referencing is this new phenomenon of parents being charged in conjunction with crimes that their children are committing,” Primm said. “It’s a divisive case.”
Primm said the father was convicted because “the warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter” and he didn’t get his son help or remove his access to guns.
“No parent thinks that their child is going to be the next school shooter, but it became more and more obvious that something bad was going to happen,” Primm said.
The judge told Colin Gray that if he had used gun locks or removed the ammunition from his house, “you wouldn’t be here today.”
Primm sentenced the father to 15 years confinement for each second-degree murder count. Those and lesser sentences on his other counts will run concurrent with one another, for a total 15-year prison sentence, the judge said.
“You didn’t intend to commit these crimes that you’ve been convicted of, but the loss here is profound,” Primm said while handing down the sentence. “But I still have to distinguish your acts from the malignant heart and the acts that Colt Gray committed upon the Apalachee school.”
The defense asked for 10 years in prison in what attorney Chris Hobbs called the first case of its kind tried in Georgia, arguing that Colin Gray knew his son was struggling but misjudged the warning signs.
“We understand the gravity of this situation. Four people are gone, and nothing the court can do today can change that. But the question today is narrower, and in some ways harder — what does justice require when a father’s negligence and a son’s concealed intent meet on a single morning?” Hobbs said.
Prosecutors asked the judge that Colin Gray be sentenced to 80 years in prison, saying that he gave Colt Gray a gun months after law enforcement asked him to restrict his son’s access to guns, and that the risk was “staring him in the face every day” in the form of a shrine to the shooter in the Parkland high school massacre in his son’s bedroom.
“This was the risk he was ignoring, that there would be a mass shooting of children at a school, and he gave his son the exact tool he would need to accomplish this,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said during the sentencing hearing Thursday. “He is the reason four people are dead, seven are injured and countless others traumatized. And he is the reason a 16-year-old boy was sentenced two days ago to the rest of his life in prison.”
Several of the family members of those killed in the school shooting addressed the court on Thursday, speaking to the pain they continue to endure.
Colin Gray declined to address the court prior to his sentence.
During the two-week trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Colin Gray had been warned that his son had an affinity for mass shooters and was aware that the teen kept a shrine on his bedroom wall dedicated to the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Instead of getting his son psychological help, Colin Gray gave the boy an AR-15-style weapon as a Christmas present that the teen ultimately used to carry out the mass shooting at Apalachee High School, prosecutors said.
Colin Gray testified in his own defense during the trial, breaking down while being questioned about whether he noticed any “red flags” that would have led him to believe the boy was capable of committing a mass shooting.
“I struggle with it every day,” Colin Gray testified. “He’s a good kid, you know? He wasn’t perfect, but to do something, uh, that heinous, like I don’t, I don’t know if anybody would see that type of evil.”
During his testimony, Colin Gray confirmed that he gave his son the AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas present, telling jurors the gift came with rules.
“This is a weapon that I want you to shoot when we go to the range, and if you keep doing really good in school, going to school and doing all the things you should, you graduate and you’re 18, this will be your gun,” Colin Gray said he told his son.
Following the verdict, Smith said that evidence showed that there were “multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time.”
“You just had to do one thing — take that rifle away — and this would have been prevented,” Smith told reporters.
Several other parents have been convicted in the U.S. in connection with a mass shooting carried out by their children.
In 2024, Jennifer and James Crumbley were convicted of charges stemming from a deadly mass shooting at a Michigan high school committed by their then-15-year-old son, Ethan Crumbley. The parents were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in separatetrials after prosecutors presented evidence of an unsecured gun at their home and their indifference toward their son’s mental health. They were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.
Their son pleaded guilty in October 2022 to murdering four students and injuring several others in the November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 2023, Robert Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty to seven counts of misdemeanor reckless conduct — one count for each person killed by his son, Robert Crimo III, during a mass shooting at a 2022 Fourth of July Parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. As part of a plea deal, Crimo Jr. was sentenced to 60 days in jail and two years of probation.
His son, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder last year and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In an ongoing case, the father of a 15-year-old girl who shot and killed a student and teacher at a Wisconsin school in 2024 faces charges alleging he allowed his daughter access to guns used in the deadly shooting.
The father, Jeffrey Rupnow, was charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in connection with the shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. His case is set to go to trial next year.
ABC News’ Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
The New York Police Department said a 27-year-old woman and a 5-month-old girl were killed, August 8, 2026, when the boat they were aboard capsized near Liberty Island in New York Harbor, pictured here. (Aire Images/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The operator of a boat that capsized in New York Harbor, leaving a mother and her baby daughter dead, is in federal custody, prosecutors said.
Manuel Hernandez, 46, is due to appear in federal court on Monday afternoon, ABC New York station WABC reported.
Investigators are looking into whether the boat was an illegal charter operation, the Coast Guard said. Hernandez was initially arrested on state charges — 13 counts of reckless endangerment — according to the New York Police Department.
The boat overturned near the Statue of Liberty on Saturday night, sending all 14 on board into the water, the Coast Guard said.
The New York Police Department identified the two people killed as 27-year-old Sara Sanchez and 5-month-old Antonella Garcia, of Queens, New York. Sources told ABC News the victims were mother and daughter.
The 12 survivors were rescued with minor injuries, the Coast Guard said.
Sanchez leaves behind her husband, who was on the boat and survived, and their 6-year-old son, who was not on the boat, WABC reported.
Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers picket outside of Penn Station in New York, US, on Saturday, May 16, 2026. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — For the first time in 32 years, tens of thousands of New Yorkers are bracing to begin the workweek without the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)after workers at the busiest commuter railroad in North America went on strike over the weekend.
More than 300,000 daily commuters rely on the LIRR to get from Long Island to New York City. State and local officials were scrambling over the weekend to get contingency plans in place, but warned commuters to expect New York City buses and subways to be crowded on Monday.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards told WABC in New York that he is expecting his borough to be a bottleneck on Monday as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is planning to use shuttle buses to transport essential workers from Long Island to subway stations in Queens.
“That’s not enough when our buses are overcrowded,” Richards said of the shuttle bus plan.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Sunday that commuters will also be allowed to park in the Citi Field parking lot, which is within walking distance to the 7 train on the New York City subway system.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked subway riders to be patient, but cautioned them to “prepare for heavier-than-usual traffic, crowded transit options and additional travel time.”
LIRR trains came to a halt at midnight on Saturday after the union representing thousands of rail workers and the MTA failed to reach an agreement on a new contract.
Kevin Sexton, the national vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), one of the five unions representing LIRR workers, told reporters that he and other leaders could not come to an agreement over salary increases and health care costs before the negotiation deadline ended.
“We are far apart at this point and we feel it’s unnecessary because we went through the process,” Sexton said of the strike.
MTA CEO Janno Leiber said during a Sunday press conference with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that what the unions have asked for would force riders to “pay the cost of a labor settlement that blew up the MTA budget.”
“We said right up to the deadline that the unions had imposed, ‘Let’s talk, let’s keep talking,’ and we sat there in the hallway, so they couldn’t even avoid seeing us, that we were available to talk to them right up to and through the deadline,” Leiber said.
Leiber said the unions chose to “walk out” on the negotiations.
The LIRR unions called the job action an “open-ended strike,” telling ABC News that, despite claims from Leiber and Hochul, MTA officials had not reached out to them about negotiations.
It was unclear on Sunday afternoon whether any new negotiations are scheduled.
According to the union statement, talks broke down when the MTA added “healthcare takeaways and other concessionary issues to the table literally in the 11th hour before a midnight strike deadline. These regressive management demands had never been raised previously.”
But in an interview on Sunday with ABC New York City station WABC, Leiber denied the unions’ assertion that a disagreement over health insurance prompted the strike, calling it “complete nonsense.”
Lieber said the rail workers’ unions “rejected every single idea that we put on the table, and there were many.”
The unions are demanding wage increases of 14.5% over four years, WABC reports, while MTA officials have offered slightly smaller increases and a lump-sum payment in the contract’s fourth year to make up the difference. The proposed pay bumps are largely in line with contracts accepted by the LIRR’s conductors and New York City Transit workers, WABC reports.
In a statement released on Saturday, Gov. Hochul said the unions “represent the highest-paid workers of any railroad in the nation, yet they are demanding contracts that could raise fares as much as 8%, pit workers against one another, and risk tax hikes for Long Islanders.”
During her news conference on Sunday, Hochul struck a more conciliatory tone.
“The work you do is absolutely vital. I value your labor and I believe that you deserve fair wages and benefits. But this strike has put all of that at risk,” Hochul said.
The governor added, “Just three days of a strike would erase every dollar of additional salary that workers would receive under a new contract.”
