On March 3, Colin Gray was found guilty of second degree murder, meaning causing a death with reckless actions without intention. This is because his son, Colt Gray, a 14-year-old attending Apalachee High school in Georgia, allegedly took a gun to school, injured seven people and killed four in Sept. of 2024.
This is one of two cases where a parent was held responsible for a shooting done by their child.
The case drew the attention of many because it raises the question of whether and adult should or should not be criminally charged for a crime that they may have had influence on but did not commit.
According to NBC news, Colin Gray was accused of “ignoring warning signs of his son’s potential violence and allowing him access to the high-capacity weapon used at Apalachee High School.”
The prosecutors said that Gray gave his son a semiautomatic rifle for Christmas. Gray also gave his son ammo, after being told not to arm him. In his son’s room, there were posters that were kept up of Nikolas Cruz on the wall. Cruz killed 17 people in Feb. of 2018 at Parkland High School in Parkland, Florida. Gray allowed his son to keep the posters up while knowing this information.
Colin Gray testified that he “recounted incidents of his son’s feeling bullied at school and occasionally showing signs of rage,” but he “never considered his son to be a violent threat.”
Colt Gray’s father also supposedly never sought out physiological help for him and the most he did was give him some of his wife’s antidepressants.
This is the second court case where a parent was found guilty for their child’s actions, the first being in 2021 in St. Paul, Michigan. Jennifer and James Crumbley were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter when their son, Ethan Crumbley, carried out a shooting at Oxford High school in 2021.
Colt Gray’s mother used this case to try and get rid of “her son’s access to guns… before the 2024 mass shooting,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said.
Colin Gray will spend the rest of his life in prison, and the trial of Colt Gray has not yet been scheduled but he is currently in jail.
