Father of Georgia school shooter sentenced to 15 years for enabling deadly attack

Colin Gray sat in a Georgia courtroom on Thursday as a judge told him plainly: you failed as a parent. The 55-year-old had been found guilty in March of murder, manslaughter, and other charges connected to a school shooting that killed four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta, in 2024. Now he was learning his sentence: 15 years in prison.

His son, Colt Gray, was 16 when he opened fire on the school. Two teachers—Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53—and two students—Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14—were killed. Scores of others were wounded. Colt pleaded guilty to the murders the week before his father's sentencing. The rifle he used was a gift from Colin Gray.

What made this case unusual enough to draw national attention was not the shooting itself, but the prosecution of the parent. Prosecutors argued that Colin Gray was the one person who could have stopped it from happening. The evidence they presented painted a picture of escalating warning signs that went unheeded. Seven months before the attack, police had questioned Colt about online threats he'd made regarding a school shooting. Despite this, Colin Gray bought his son an AR-style rifle for Christmas that year. During the trial, jurors learned that Colt had kept a notebook detailing plans to kill students and teachers. Assistant District Attorney Patricia Brooks told the jury that after witnessing sign after sign of his son's deteriorating mental state and obsession with school shootings, Colin Gray had "sufficient warning that his son was a bomb just waiting to go off. And instead of disarming him, he gave him the detonator."

Judge Nicholas Primm handed down 15 years for each second-degree murder conviction and 10 years for each involuntary manslaughter conviction, all to run concurrently. Prosecutors had sought the maximum of 80 years. The defense had asked for 10 years. Before announcing the sentence, Primm addressed Gray directly, criticizing him for failing to send his son to counseling, for not monitoring his online activity, and for not securing the firearms in the house. "The warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter," the judge said, "and you failed to do the simplest things to prevent this."

Yet Primm also acknowledged a distinction: Colin Gray had not sought to harm anyone himself, and he had not pulled the trigger. His defense lawyer, Jimmy Barry, had argued during trial that the blame belonged entirely with Colt, who made a conscious, secretive decision to commit murder. The tension between these two positions—that a parent can be held responsible for failing to prevent a crime they did not commit—sits at the heart of a legal shift now taking place in the United States.

This is only the third time a parent has faced criminal liability for a mass shooting carried out by their child. In April 2024, the parents of a Michigan teenager who killed four students with a gun they had purchased for him just days before the shooting were sentenced for their role in the attack. That case was widely reported as the first of its kind. Now, with Colin Gray's conviction, the precedent is becoming clearer: parental negligence in the face of known danger can carry serious criminal consequences. The question of what a parent should have seen, what they should have done, and what responsibility they bear when they do neither, is no longer theoretical.