Colin Gray will spend 15 years in prison because he gave his troubled teenage son the rifle used to murder four people at Apalachee High School in Georgia.
Family members of those who died and victims of the shooting condemned what they said were Gray's failures as a parent and urged the judge to give him the maximum sentence possible.
"This wasn't unavoidable. This was preventable. Because of the choices made inside the Gray household, four families were handed life sentences of grief," said Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son was killed.
"He did not pull the trigger but purchased and left a firearm accessible to a minor," said Shayna Aspinwall, whose husband was killed. She said the sentence must take into account "the families left behind who must carry the grief and trauma for the rest of our lives."
His son, Colt Gray, received life without parole two days earlier for killing students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie.
PJ Media commentators ask the same question whenever we write about the teen riots that have popped up throughout the country, where strangers are attacked or public spaces are made dangerous:
Where were the parents?
The law must answer carefully; a mother or father shouldn't go to prison merely because a child commits a terrible crime. Colin Gray's case involved far more than a family connection.
Police questioned Colin and Colt Gray in May 2023 after investigators received a tip about online threats to carry out a school shooting. Colin acknowledged having guns in the house and insisted his son didn't have unrestricted access.
Colin Gray told the officers that he and his son had recently moved to Jackson County after being evicted from his former home and separating from his wife, who moved to a different county with their other two younger children.
“In the beginning, he kind of struggled a bit,” Colin Gray told them.
“But he’s been doing really good,” the father said about their recent move.
When asked if he had any firearms in the home, Colin Gray responded yes, but that none were loaded. He said he and his son would go deer hunting together.
“I’m gonna be mad as hell if he did say that,” Colin Gray added.
He then assured the officers that if his 13-year-old son was found to be responsible for the online threats, then “all the guns will go away.”
But the father never followed through with his promise after Colt Gray denied making any threats and told the officers that his Discord account had been hacked.
Months later, he gave Colt a semiautomatic rifle for Christmas, along with ammunition, a sight, and other shooting gear.
The warnings continued. Marcee Gray, Colt's mother, testified that she urged Colin to lock up the firearms because their son had become aggressive and unpredictable: Colt's bedroom included a display honoring the Parkland school shooter.
Chief Judge Nicholas Primm said the warnings became increasingly obvious, but Colin didn't get his son help or revoke his access to the guns.
On Sept. 4, 2024, Colt carried the rifle onto a school bus, concealed it with poster board, and brought it into Apalachee High School. He killed four people and wounded nine others. Investigators later found the weapon had been kept in Colt's bedroom.
Further Reading: When Teen Chaos Meets a Country Afraid to Say No
A Georgia jury convicted Colin Gray on 27 counts, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, cruelty to children, and reckless conduct.
Georgia's second-degree murder law covers a death caused through criminally negligent cruelty to a child. The murder counts applied to the two students, while the manslaughter counts covered the two teachers.
Piedmont Judicial Circuit District Attorney Brad Smith asked for 80 years, but Primm imposed concurrent terms totaling 15 years. He recognized the harm caused by Colin's negligence while separating the father's failures from Colt's deliberate murders.
The sentence preserved the legal difference between criminal neglect and intentional slaughter.
This situation turns into a slippery slope for me. Prosecutors shouldn't turn every troubled teenager's crime into a case against the parents. Parents can't know every hidden thought, and even attentive families still miss concealed plans.
However, if there was a credible threat and a child needed intervention and didn't receive it, then parents failed that child.
Criminal liability should require strong evidence that a parent knew of a serious danger, had the power to reduce it, and then helped create or preserve the threat.
Colin Gray met that standard. He had been warned about school-shooting threats, knew his son was deteriorating, was urged to secure the guns, and yet still supplied the weapon and left it accessible.
Michigan juries reached similar conclusions in the Oxford High School shooting. James and Jennifer Crumbley each received 10 to 15 years after buying their son a handgun, failing to secure it, and ignoring urgent signs on the day he killed four students.
Such prosecutions are rare, as they should be. But rarity doesn't make them wrong.
Parents can't control every choice a teenager makes; they can only set a good example of character and maturity, and control whether a deeply troubled child receives a lethal weapon and easy access to it.
When adults knowingly preserve a danger they had the power to stop, the law can hold them responsible.
Colt Gray committed the murders; Colin Gray helped place the rifle in his hands. Four families now live with empty chairs, unfinished conversations, and grief that never received a choice.
Fifteen years won't restore what was taken, but it tells parents that looking away carries a steep price.
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