Winder, Georgia
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A teenage woman wounded in a shooting at a Georgia high school in September 2024 testified on Tuesday concerning the harrowing second she realized she had been shot.
Melany Delira-Castaneda was 15 and dealing on her math e book at Apalachee High School when her ear started ringing and he or she smelled smoke, she testified. She stood up and turned towards the door and noticed Colt Gray, then 14, pointing a firearm into the classroom and firing indiscriminately, she mentioned.
“I didn’t know I was shot, but I was. My body just told me to hold my arm,” Melany, now 16, mentioned quietly by way of tears. “I was holding my arm and I hid between a pillar … between her smartboard and my desk.”
After the shooting, police took her into the hallway, and Melany noticed two college students who had been killed mendacity on the ground. She finally went to the hospital and was left with a gunshot wound in her left shoulder and continues to face emotional challenges.
“I feel like, just seeing what I saw that day just sticks with me, and not being able to trust certain people,” she mentioned of the shooting’s impact on her.
Melany was one of a number of teenage shooting victims who testified Tuesday in the trial of Colin Gray, the father of the suspected school shooter, on fees of homicide and manslaughter. Prosecutors allege Colin Gray purchased his son the AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting regardless of earlier warnings that his son was a hazard to others, actions that represent criminally reckless conduct.
The trial started Monday with opening statements and testimony from academics, police and fogeys on the school that day who spoke concerning the horror of the assault, which left two students and two teachers dead. Nine different folks have been injured.
Colin Gray has pleaded not responsible to almost 30 fees, together with two counts every of second-degree homicide and involuntary manslaughter. His legal professional mentioned in opening statements Monday that Colin Gray was unaware his son was planning the shooting and had taken steps to attempt to get him assist.
“When someone conceals a plan, deceives the people around them, acts independently, the law does not allow us to pretend that the people left behind should’ve seen through all of it,” Hobbs mentioned.
Colin Gray’s trial is a component of a broader push to carry extra folks accountable for a school shooting, together with the shooter’s parents and responding law enforcement officers.
This case bears shut similarities to the trials of James and Jennifer Crumbley, whose then-15-year-old son killed 4 college students in 2021 at his excessive school in Oxford, Michigan. The Crumbley dad and mom have been every convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to fifteen years in jail. Their son was sentenced to life in prison with out parole.
Colin Gray has remained behind bars since his arrest a day after the shooting. If convicted, he faces 10 to 30 years in jail on every homicide cost and 1 to 10 years on every manslaughter cost.
Colt Gray finally surrendered to police and has admitted to the shooting, in keeping with authorities. Now 16, he has pleaded not responsible to 55 felony counts, together with 4 counts of malice homicide. A trial date has not been set.