A father was charged with murder after his teen son was accused of fatally shooting four in a Georgia high school in 2024 — and on Tuesday a jury returned a verdict in the case against the dad.
The jury found Colin Gray guilty of all charges in the deadly shooting his son is accused of carrying out at Apalachee High School in Winder, which is northeast of Atlanta, the Associated Press reported.
Colt Gray — who was 14 at the time of the shooting — pleaded not guilty to 55 counts, including murder, the AP said.
The outlet said Gray “now joins a growing number” of parents being held responsible after their children have been accused in shootings.
More from the AP:
Colin Gray was found guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Georgia law defines second-degree murder as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children. Gray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the killings of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
Another teacher and eight other students were wounded. Gray was also convicted of multiple counts of reckless conduct and cruelty to children.
RELATED: 4 killed, 9 injured in shooting at Georgia high school, officials say
Gray will be sentenced at a later date, the AP said, adding that second-degree murder is punishable by at least 10 but no more than 30 years in prison; involuntary manslaughter carries a penalty of one to 10 years in prison.
“We talk a lot about rights in our country,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith told the outlet after the verdict. “But God gave us a duty to protect our children, and I hope that we remember that, as parents, as community members, to protect our children because that is our God-given duty.”
The teen’s mother, Marcee Gray, wasn’t charged, the AP said.
She testified that she urged her estranged husband to lock all guns inside his truck so their son Colt couldn’t access them, the outlet noted. She and Colin Gray were separated in the months leading up to the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting, the AP reported, and Colt lived mostly with his father during that time.
Prosecutors said Colin Gray gave Colt the gun he’s accused of using in the school shooting as a Christmas gift and allowed him access to it along with ammunition despite the boy’s deteriorating mental health, the outlet reported, adding that they said Colin Gray had “sufficient warning that Colt Gray would harm and endanger” others.
Colt Gray — who was 14 at the time of the shooting — pleaded not guilty to 55 counts, including murder, the AP said, adding that his judge set a status hearing for mid-March.
More from the AP:
Investigators said Colt Gray carefully planned the shooting at the school attended by 1,900 students.
He boarded the school bus with a semiautomatic, assault-style rifle in his book bag, the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster board, investigators said. He left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the gun and then shot people in a classroom and hallways, investigators said.
Colin Gray knew his son was obsessed with school shooters, even having a shrine in his bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors said.
“It wasn’t like one parent missed one warning,” Smith told reporters, according to the outlet. “This was multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time and, like we said, you just had to do one thing — take that rifle away, and this would have been prevented.”
The AP said Jennifer and James Crumbley — the first U.S. parents held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by a child — are serving 10-year prison terms for involuntary manslaughter after their son Ethan killed four students and wounded others in Michigan in 2021.
The outlet added that Colin Gray was the first such parent to be charged in Georgia.
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