Dad of Georgia high school shooting suspect found guilty of murder charges for mass shooting deaths
A Georgia jury has found Colin Gray guilty on all charges related to his actions of failing to stop his teenage son from carrying out a mass shooting at Apalachee High School that killed two students and two teachers in 2024.
The verdict was reached on Tuesday, after just a few hours of deliberating and two weeks of witness testimony.
Colin Gray faced 27 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter, tied to prosecutors’ claim that he knowingly allowed his troubled son access to firearms and ammunition prior to the mass shooting. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
His son Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time of the September 4, 2024 shooting, is accused of bringing a AR-15-style rifle his father had given him for Christmas to school and killing two students – Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39; and Cristina Irimie, 53. Another teacher and eight other students were wounded.
Colt, now 16, faces 55 felony counts, including murder and aggravated assault. He has pleaded not guilty. A date for his trial has not yet been set.
Colin Gray could have prevented an attack, Barrow County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Brooks said in her closing argument.
“After seeing sign after sign of his son’s deteriorating mental state, his violence, his school shooter obsession, the defendant had sufficient warning that his son was a bomb just waiting to go off,” Brooks told jurors on Monday. “And instead of disarming him, he gave him the detonator.”
In the defense closing argument, Jimmy Berry, agreed that what the dad knew ahead of time was of paramount importance in the case.
“That’s real important because that really is the key to this case, is what did he know?,” he said. “Did he know that Colt would do this?”
On the stand, Colin Gray broke down when asked if he ever saw red flags.
“No, I struggle with it every day,” he said. “He’s a good kid… to do something that heinous – I don’t know if anybody could ever see that kind of evil. The Colt I knew… there was this whole other side of Colt I didn’t know existed.”
Asked if he tried to help his son, Gray said: “I did, I just wanted him okay.”
Under cross-examination, he acknowledged that multiple firearms were stored unsecured in a closet and that Colt sometimes kept the rifle in his bedroom. Prosecutors highlighted a text message from Colt weeks before the shooting: “Whenever something happens just know the blood is on your hands.”
Jurors also saw body-camera footage from May 2023, when deputies visited the home after an FBI tip about an online threat to shoot up a school. The threat could not be substantiated, and Gray bought the rifle later that year.
