A Georgia jury found a father guilty of a crime because his teenage son allegedly shot and killed two schoolmates and two teachers while carrying an AR-15-style rifle that had been kept in their home.
The Barrow County jury found Colin Gray, 55, guilty of all charges. These charges included second-degree murder and cruelty to children in connection with the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder on September 4, 2024.
The jury took less than two hours to decide that Gray was guilty on all 27 counts. When the jury read its verdicts, he didn’t seem to show any emotions on the outside.
Gray was handcuffed and taken away by court security after the jury was asked to confirm all the guilty verdicts. He was wearing a blue sports coat and khaki pants.
Judge Nicholas Primm didn’t immediately set a date for sentencing, saying, “There are a lot of people who need to be notified and have a right to appear.” Gray could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Colt Gray, the man who is said to have shot the gun, is accused of using the gun that his father should have kept safe to kill people about 45 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.
The younger Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, is still in jail, and a trial date has not yet been set.
Prosecutors said that Colin Gray ignored signs that his son might be violent and let him get to the high-capacity weapon that was used at Apalachee High School.
The jury saw pictures of Colt’s bedroom, which had pictures of school shooter Nickolas Cruz on the wall. On February 14, 2018, Cruz shot and killed 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
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Mason Schermerhorn, 14; Christian Angulo, 14; Richard Aspinwall, 39; and Cristina Irimie, 53, were the four people who died.
“Christian acted and became a hero. He attempted to push the shooter out of his classroom, and when he was shot, Christian’s last act on this earth was to shut the door to his classroom to protect his friends,” Barrow County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Brooks told jurors in closing arguments.
Colin Gray, who was testifying for himself, talked about times when his son felt bullied at school and sometimes got angry.
The dad told the jurors, though, that he never thought Colt Gray was a violent threat.
“I never thought that he would even have a thought process of bringing a gun to school or doing any kind of harm to anybody else. Well, on anybody at school,” the older Gray told jurors.
During the interviews, he told an investigator that he bought the rifle to get Colt away from video games and into deer hunting. He also said that the teen’s behavior had gotten worse over the past few months and that he had signed papers with the school to get Colt counseling.
The trial is part of a larger effort to hold more people responsible for school shootings, such as the parents of the shooters and the police who respond.
Parents have historically faced criminal charges when their child perpetrates a school shooting.
James Crumbley and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, were both found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for their son Ethan Crumbley’s deadly shooting spree at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit in 2021.
