Georgia high school shooting suspect makes first court appearance
Booking photo of Apalachee High School shooting suspect, Colt Gray, released by the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office. — Barrow County Sheriff’s Office
(WINDER, Ga.) — Colt Gray, the 14-year-old accused of opening fire at his Georgia high school, made his first court appearance on Friday, where the judge informed him of the charges against him and ordered him held without bond.
Gray is charged with four counts of felony murder for allegedly shooting and killing two teachers and two students at Apalachee High School on Wednesday.
Another seven students and two teachers were injured. All of the injured victims are expected to make full recoveries, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
More charges against Gray are expected, the GBI said.
The 14-year-old will be tried as an adult, authorities said.
A motive has not yet been determined and it is unknown if the victims were targeted, investigators said.
Gray’s aunt, Annie Brown, said her nephew was “begging for help from everybody around him.”
Investigators believe that Gray received the AR-style gun used in the shooting as a Christmas present from his father, according to sources.
The teen’s father, Colin Gray, 54, was arrested Thursday and charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the GBI said.
Colin Gray is accused of “knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon,” GBI Director Chris Hosey said Thursday.
Colin Gray is also expected to appear in court on Friday.
(NEW YORK) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, finding several major issues “impugn the reliability” of the original outcome.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals faulted the trial judge for dismissing the case before the jury had reached a verdict. The jury was allowed to continue deliberating before ultimately finding the newspaper not liable in February 2022.
“Unfortunately, several major issues at trial — specifically, the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations of the district court’s Rule 50 dismissal ruling — impugn the reliability of that verdict,” the opinion said.
Palin sued the Times and its former opinion editor, James Bennet, over an editorial published on June 14, 2017. The piece, entitled “America’s Lethal Politics,” linked the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to a digital graphic of a crosshairs over Democratic congressional districts published in March 2010 by Palin’s political action committee. A relationship between the crosshairs map and the shooting was never established. Rather, at the time of the editorial, the attack was widely viewed as a result of the shooter’s mental illness.
Palin’s original defamation lawsuit was dismissed but, in 2019, the Second Circuit vacated the dismissal. The case went to trial in 2022. Judge Jed Rakoff granted the Times’ motion for a directed verdict days before the jury found the newspaper was not liable for defaming Palin.
In its opinion on Wednesday, the appeals court agreed with Palin that Rakoff “erroneously disregarded or discredited her evidence of actual malice and improperly substituted its own judgment for that of the jury.”
The New York Times told ABC News in a statement Wednesday: “This decision is disappointing. We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial.”
Rakoff said at the time that he would set aside the verdict and dismiss the lawsuit because Palin had not met the high standard of showing the Times had acted with “actual malice” when it published an editorial that erroneously linked Palin’s political action committee to a mass shooting.
Palin sued the Times in 2017, roughly nine years after she was tapped to be Sen. John McCain’s GOP vice presidential nominee, claiming the newspaper deliberately ruined her burgeoning career as a political commentator and consultant by publishing an erroneous editorial she said defamed her.
The editorial that prompted the lawsuit was published on the same day a gunman opened fire on GOP politicians practicing for a congressional charity baseball game in a Washington, D.C., suburb, injuring six, including Republican Rep. Steve Scalise.
The Times’ editorial board wrote that prior to the 2011 Arizona mass shooting that killed six people and left Giffords with a traumatic brain injury, Palin’s political action committee had fueled a violent atmosphere by circulating a map that put the electoral districts of Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
Two days later, the Times published a correction saying the editorial had “incorrectly described” the map and “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting.”
During the trial, Palin, in her testimony, accused the Times of deliberately fabricating information to sully her reputation.
Bennet testified that while he was responsible for the erroneous information in the editorial, it was an honest mistake and that he meant no harm.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump has asked a federal appeals court for a stay that would delay the sentencing in his New York hush-money case, which is scheduled for Sept. 18.
The longshot attempt to delay the sentencing comes one day after District Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied Trump’s bid to move his criminal case to federal court.
In a 28-page filing late Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to stay Judge Hellerstein’s order — a move that would delay Trump’s criminal case, including his sentencing, from moving forward.
“Absent the requested stay, President Trump and the American people will suffer irreparable harm,” defense attorneys Emil Bove and Todd Blanche wrote.
Trump’s lawyers claimed in the appeal that the former president’s case belongs in federal court because the allegations and evidence in the case relate to Trump’s official acts as president — an argument defense attorneys said was bolstered by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.
In their filing, defense attorneys emphasized the “irreparable harm” of allowing the sentencing to proceed because it could result in Trump’s “unconstitutional incarceration while the 2024 Presidential election is imminent.”
“Unlawfully incarcerating President Trump in the final weeks of the Presidential election, while early voting is ongoing, would irreparably harm the First Amendment rights of President Trump and voters located far beyond New York County,” defense attorneys wrote.
Trump made a similar argument unsuccessfully to Hellerstein, and legal experts generally agree that Trump will not have to serve whatever sentence he receives until after the election.
Later this week, a panel of judges on the same federal appeals court is set to consider Trump’s appeal of a 2023 civil judgment holding him liable for sexual abuse of columnist E. Jean Carroll and awarding her $5 million in damages.
President of Columbia University Dr. Nemat (Minouche) Shafik testifies during a House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing about antisemitism on college campuses, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 17, 2024. (DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Columbia University President Minouche Shafik announced her immediate resignation Wednesday, months after college protests over the Israel-Hamas war gripped the campus.
“I write with sadness to tell you that I am stepping down as president of Columbia University,” Shafik wrote in a letter to members of the university.
The announcement comes after protests broke out on the university’s campus in April, leading to arrests, property damage and backlash over the institution’s handling of the protests.
“It has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community,” Shafik said in her letter, adding, “This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.”
“Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead. I am making this announcement now so that new leadership can be in place before the new term begins,” Shafik said.
Shafik, who became the first woman and person of color to lead the university in 2023, is the third Ivy League president to step down in recent months.
Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill previously announced their resignations following Congressional testimonies on the handling of anti-Semitism on campus.
During her congressional testimony in April, Shafik told the committee that Columbia “strives to be a community free of discrimination and hate in all forms, and we condemn the antisemitism that is so pervasive today.”
Shafik said she took the job to foster a diverse community at Columbia.
“But on Oct. 7, the world changed and so did my focus,” she said.
The day after Shafik’s testimony, more than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested, and an on-campus tent encampment was removed after Shafik gave the New York Police Department the green light to clear the protesters. What followed was weeks of protests and widespread tent encampments that culminated in the occupation of the university’s Hamilton Hall.
In May, Columbia University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed a vote of no confidence in Shafik.
“I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion,” Shafik wrote in her letter. “It has been distressing — for the community, for me as president and on a personal level — to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse.”
Shafik, who previously led the London School of Economics and worked for the World Bank, announced she will return to the U.K. following her resignation.
“I am honored to have been asked by the U.K.’s Foreign Secretary to chair a review of the government’s approach to international development and how to improve capability,” Shafik said.
Katrina Armstrong, MD, who leads the university’s medical school and medical center, was announced as the interim president following Shafik’s departure.
