LOUISVILLE, Ky.
(AP) — A teen charged in the 2018 Kentucky school shooting that killed
two students has pleaded guilty to murder.

Gabriel
Ross Parker was 15 when he fired a handgun into a crowd of students
before classes started at Marshall County High School on Jan. 23, 2018.
Parker was arrested at the school and charged with murder. He later was
charged as an adult.

Marshall
County Commonwealth’s Attorney Dennis Foust said the plea deal gives
Parker a life sentence. Along with the murder convictions, he also
pleaded guilty to 14 counts of assault.

Parker, now 18, appeared by teleconference on Tuesday before Marshall Circuit Judge James Jameson.

Foust
said the coronavirus pandemic played a role in moving toward a plea
agreement for Parker. The trial was scheduled to open June 1.

Foust,
the lead prosecutor in the case, said the trial would likely have been
pushed back to January at the earliest, and because of restrictions, he
was having trouble lining up witnesses and medical experts.

“So at that point at some people are saying maybe it’s time to get some closure,” Foust said by phone Tuesday.

Killed
in the shootings were Bailey Holt and Preston Cope, both 15. Foust
spoke with Holt and Cope’s parents about the plea deal before moving
forward.

“It just made more sense to do this,” Foust said. Parker would be eligible for parole in 2038, he said.

WPSD-TV in Paducah first reported the plea agreement on Tuesday. Parker will be sentenced by a judge on June 12.

In
a statement received by the news station on Tuesday, Parker’s mother,
Mary Minyard, said she has struggled over the two years to “express how
deeply sorry I am for everything that has happened.”

“To
the Holt and Cope families, I know there will never be words that I can
say to make up for the precious lives you’ve lost, but I hope you know
how deeply I feel that loss and how truly sorry I am,” Minyard wrote.

Parker
told police investigators that he took the handgun used in the shooting
from his stepfather’s bedroom closet, using a laundry basket to sneak
it out of the room. Parker told police he had the gun in his bag when he
went to school, pulled it out and began firing into a commons area.

He
said in the hysteria after the shooting some students, not knowing he
had fired the gun, urged him to join them in a safe room with other
students.

One
of the students huddled in that room, Keaton Conner, said in 2018 that
she was talking to her mother on the phone when she saw Parker — who she
didn’t know — with a “cold expression on his face.” Police later came
into the room and arrested Parker, Conner said.

“He was the person who had just killed two of my classmates,” she said.

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