Apalachee shooter’s father faces sentencing at hearing starting Thursday

With Colin Gray’s conviction in March, he became at least the third parent in the U.S. to be convicted on charges related to their child’s alleged crime.

It took a jury less than two hours to find the father guilty of second-degree murder and more than two dozen other charges in the novel case that prosecutors hope will help prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Prosecutors said Gray, ignoring years of warnings from family and mental health professionals, allowed his troubled son continued access to the guns and tactical gear he allegedly used to carry out the shooting.

“It wasn’t like one parent missed one warning. This was multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith told reporters after the landmark Georgia verdict. “You just had to do one thing: take that rifle away and this would have been prevented.”

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Gray said he bought his son the rifle for Christmas, hoping it would bring them closer together. But authorities said Colin Gray ignored a series of red flags leading up to the shooting that killed two teachers and two students inside the high school on Sept. 4, 2024.

The father’s trial was one of the first in the nation in which a parent was held accountable for allegedly enabling a child’s access to a gun used in a school shooting.

In the only other case like it to have proceeded to trial, the parents of a Michigan school shooter were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to prison.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/Pool Atlanta Journa

Credit: Arvin Temkar/Pool Atlanta Journa

Colin Gray’s son, Colt Gray, was sentenced Tuesday to life without the possibility of parole after three days of court testimony from victims, experts and other witnesses. Colt Gray pleaded guilty last week to all 55 charges in the mass school shooting.

Primm sided with the district attorney’s argument that the 16-year-old must remain in custody for the rest of his life with no chance at parole over the defense attorney’s position that the teen could improve as a person if given the proper resources that he severely lacked as a child and adolescent.

Colin Gray’s two second-degree murder charges were predicated on two child cruelty counts, one for each of the two 14-year-olds killed.

Those killed were two students — Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn — and two teachers — Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall. Nine others were injured.

Gray knew his son, 14 at the time of the attack, had become infatuated with school shooters, prosecutors contended at the father’s trial.

He had seen what investigators described as a “shrine” to Nikolas Cruz, who was convicted of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, they said. That shooting left 17 people dead and another 17 others injured.

Still, Colin Gray allowed the teen to keep the rifle in his bedroom, relatives said. Authorities argued the boy had “unfettered access” to the weapon and ammunition allegedly used to carry out the Apalachee shooting.

Credit: Courtesy photos

Credit: Courtesy photos

“He’s a good kid,” Colin Gray said of the son while testifying during during his own trial in March. “He wasn’t perfect, nor was I. But how he could do something that heinous, I don’t know if anybody could see that kind of evil. There was a whole other side of Colt that I never knew existed.”

When Barrow County deputies showed up in his driveway about two hours after the shooting, Colin already suspected his son was involved.

“God! I knew it, man,” Colin is heard telling deputies in body camera footage that was shown to the jury. He had received ominous texts from both Colt and his daughter that morning, prosecutors showed.

— Staff writer Taylor Croft contributed to this article.