A man who gave his son the gun he used to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison.
Colin Gray’s sentencing comes days after his son, Colt Gray, was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school 45 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. Colt Gray had pleaded guilty to murder and other charges.A defense attorney
for Colin Gray asked the judge for a sentence that would amount to 10 years in prison followed by 10 years on probation. The district attorney said Gray deserves a sentence of 80 years in prison.
Judge Nicholas Primm, who also sentenced Colt Gray earlier this week, noted that all of Colin Gray's cirmes were crimes of negligence “tethered to the tragedy committed by his son.”
“My heart aches for everyone that was there that day, for all of you that have been impacted by it. But the law requires that I set aside emotion. I don’t get to sentence with passion. I have the nearly impossible task of sentencing you without passion despite the immeasurable heartache that you caused,” Primm said.
The elder Gray is one of a handful of American parents who have been criminally charged after their children were accused in shootings.
A jury in March found Colin Gray 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 also 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, seven of them hit by gunfire.
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.”
Prosecutors say Colin Gray gave his son the rifle as a Christmas gift along with ammunition, a gun sight and other shooting accessories.
Barrow County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Jason Smith testified that Colt Gray carried the semiautomatic rifle onto the school bus with the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster board. The teenager left his second-period class and went to a bathroom, emerged with the rifle and shot people in the hallway and a classroom, the investigator said.
Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, had shown signs of deteriorating mental health in the weeks leading up to the killings, according to testimony during his sentencing hearing. He belonged to a “true crime community” online where he and other young people discussed their obsession with mass shooters, an investigator testified.
The teen's mother, Marcee Gray, who was separated from Colin Gray, told investigators that she had argued with her estranged husband weeks before the shooting, asking him to secure his guns and restrict their son's access.
Colin Gray's attorney argued that Colt Gray “actively hid the depth of his involvement” in an online community obsessed with mass shooters. The red flags enumerated by prosecutors were spaced out and “surrounded by stretches of a child who laughed, who was bright, who loved his computer, video games, who played guitar, who went into the woods with his father,” attorney Brian Hobbs said.
A decades-long sentence would effectively be “death in prison” for his 55-year-old client, he said. By giving Gray essentially the same sentence as his son, the actual killer, the judge would be erasing the line in Georgia law “between the harm a person intends to do and the harm a person fails to prevent,” Hobbs argued.
Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith countered that Colin Gray “was convicted for what he did know." Gray ignored “a substantial and unjustifiable risk," Smith said, displaying photos and news articles about the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that hung on Colt Gray's bedroom wall.
“This 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," Smith said. "He is the reason four people are dead, seven were injured and countless others were traumatized, and he is the reason a 16-year-old boy was sentenced two days ago to the rest of his life in prison.”
Prosecutors have in recent years held parents responsible when they believe they can prove a parent contributed to a killing.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first U.S. parents to face such charges after their son, Ethan, killed four students and wounded others at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021. Like Colin Gray, they were unaware of their son’s plans but had gifted him a gun before the shooting. They are serving 10-year prison terms for involuntary manslaughter. Hobbs, the defense attorney, urged the judge to use that sentence as a guide.
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This story has been corrected to show the school is called Apalachee High School, not Appalachee.
