By Reuters and The Associated Press<\/p>\n
Published On 30 Jul 202630 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
A father who gave his son the gun he used to kill four individuals at Georgia\u2019s Apalachee High School has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s sentencing hearing was part of a growing number of cases in which a parent has been held criminally responsible for a school shooting carried out by their child.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Colin Gray, 55, had been convicted in March of second-degree murder for the killing of two 14-year-olds, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, as well as for manslaughter in the deaths of teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie.<\/p>\n
All four were killed when Gray\u2019s son, Colt, now 16, opened fire in his high school on September 4, 2024. Colt was sentenced this week to life in prison without parole.<\/p>\n
Judge Nicholas Primm, who oversaw both sentencing hearings, addressed the father directly in his remarks, saying that he had \u201cfailed as a parent\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe loss here is profound,\u201d Primm said. \u201cBut I still have to distinguish your acts from the malignant heart and the acts that Colt Gray committed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Primm acknowledged that he could have opted for a lighter suggestion, as Colin Gray\u2019s defence team had suggested. Lawyers for the father had sought 10 years in prison and 10 years of probation.<\/p>\n
The judge also expressed sympathy for the families that had testified in the case, sharing the pain they had endured. Some had called for the maximum sentence of 80 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart aches for everyone that was there that day, for all of you that have been impacted by it,\u201d Primm told the grieving families, before turning to Gray.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the law requires that I set aside emotion. I don\u2019t get to sentence with passion. I have the nearly impossible task of sentencing you without passion despite the immeasurable heartache that you caused.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Georgia, second-degree murder can include causing the death of a child through the crime of cruelty to children.<\/p>\n
Gray\u2019s actions in the lead-up to his son\u2019s shooting spree have raised questions about parental responsibility in cases of mass shootings.<\/p>\n
Gray gifted his son a SIG Sauer SIGM400 rifle as a Christmas present the year before the school shooting.<\/p>\n
But family members \u2014 including Marcee Gray, Colt\u2019s mother, from whom Colin was separated \u2014 had voiced concern about the teenager\u2019s mental state. Marcee Gray later testified she had appealed to Colin Gray before the shooting to lock up the guns and prevent their son from accessing them.<\/p>\n
Colt Gray was 14 when he brought the rifle to school, left his second-period class and opened fire in a school hallway and classroom.<\/p>\n
In addition to the four victims killed, a third teacher and eight other students were injured in the shooting.<\/p>\n
During Colin Gray\u2019s prosecution, Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith pointed to Colt\u2019s mental state as a warning sign, as well as other indications.<\/p>\n
Smith pointed out, for instance, that Colt appeared to have erected a shrine in his bedroom to another school shooter responsible for killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was the risk that he was ignoring, that there would be a mass shooting of children at a school, and he gave his son the exact tool he would need to accomplish this,\u201d Smith said of Colin Gray.<\/p>\n
Family members of the victims echoed that assertion.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did not pull the trigger but purchased and left a firearm accessible to a minor,\u201d said Shayna Aspinwall, the spouse of one of the slain teachers.<\/p>\n
Colin Gray\u2019s conviction and sentencing echoes a similar case in Michigan, where parents Jennifer and James Crumbley faced criminal charges after their son Ethan Crumbley, then 15, carried out a mass shooting.<\/p>\n
His actions resulted in the killing of four students at Oxford High School in 2021, as well as seven people injured.<\/p>\n
The Crumbleys had also gifted their son a firearm, and they too have denied forewarning of their child\u2019s attack. Both were sentenced to 10 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.<\/p>\n
In Thursday\u2019s sentencing, Primm acknowledged that such cases are \u201cdivisive\u201d. But he argued that Colin Gray could have taken multiple actions to prevent his son\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were convicted because the warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter, and you didn\u2019t get him help, and you didn\u2019t remove his access to the guns,\u201d Primm said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Reuters and The Associated Press Published On 30 Jul 202630 Jul 2026 A father who gave his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1343,924,80,25813,49,50,51,47,52,48,158,3544],"class_list":["post-719989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-government","tag-gun-violence","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}