Teenager, 16, pleads guilty to all 55 counts in 2024 deadly shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia

WINDER, Ga. (AP) -- A teenager has pleaded guilty to all 55 counts in a deadly shooting nearly two years ago at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Colt Gray, 16, entered the plea Friday without having reached a deal with prosecutors. He had previously pleaded not guilty to charges in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting that killed two students and two teachers, and left several others wounded, at the high school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm is now expected to hear each side's summary of the case, evidence and sentencing recommendation before deciding the sentence. Gray's trial had been scheduled to start in mid-October in Columbia County, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from where the shooting happened, after the judge agreed to a defense request for a change of venue. A jury in March convicted his father, Colin Gray, on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and he is scheduled to be sentenced next week. Prosecutors said the elder Gray gave his son the assault-style rifle used to open fire at the school. Teachers Richard "Ricky" Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire. A non-negotiated plea means that the state and the defense have not reached an agreement on a sentence. Unlike a negotiated plea deal, in which a defendant often pleads guilty in exchange for an agreed-upon sentence and possibly reduced charges, sentencing is left entirely to the judge. Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, was charged as an adult with 55 total counts, including murder in the four deaths and 25 counts of aggravated assault. Investigators testified that the teenager carried the rifle onto the school bus with the barrel wrapped in a poster board. They said he left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the rifle, shooting people in a classroom and hallway. Investigators have said Colt Gray carefully plotted the shooting at the high school of 1,900 students. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified that the teen left a notebook in his classroom with step-by-step instructions and a diagram to prepare for the assault, including an estimate that he could kill as many as 26 people and wound as many as 13 others. Investigators found a shrine in Colt Gray's bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors said.