Father who gave gun to Georgia school shooting suspect for Christmas is
guilty of 2nd-degree murder
[March 04, 2026]
By JEFF MARTIN
WINDER, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man who gave his teenage son the gun he's
accused of using to kill two students and two teachers at a high school
was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder and involuntary
manslaughter.
Jurors took less than two hours to find Colin Gray guilty of all charges
in the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder,
northeast of Atlanta. Gray now joins a growing number of parents being
held responsible in court after their children were accused in
shootings.
Colin Gray was found 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 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. Gray was also
convicted of multiple counts of reckless conduct and cruelty to
children.
Reactions to the verdict
Gray showed little emotion as the verdict was read and each juror was
polled by the judge. Deputies then cuffed his hands behind his back as
he stood at the defense table, speaking with his lawyer. He will be
sentenced at a later date. Second-degree murder is punishable by at
least 10 but no more than 30 years in prison, while involuntary
manslaughter carries a penalty of one to 10 years in prison.
Some relatives of victims wept as the verdicts were read. They declined
to comment after court. Gray’s defense lawyers left without speaking to
reporters.
“We talk a lot about rights in our country,” Barrow County District
Attorney Brad Smith said after the verdict. “But God gave us a duty to
protect our children, and I hope that we remember that, as parents, as
community members, to protect our children because that is our God-given
duty.”
The teen's mother, Marcee Gray, wasn't charged. She testified that she
had urged her estranged husband to take any guns and lock them inside
his truck so they would not be accessible to their son. She and Colin
Gray were separated in the months leading up to the shooting, and Colt
Gray lived mostly with his father during that time. She declined to
comment when reached by phone after the verdict.
The shooting
Prosecutors said Gray gave his son the gun as a Christmas gift and
allowed him access to it along with ammunition despite the boy's
deteriorating mental health. They said he had “sufficient warning that
Colt Gray would harm and endanger” other people.
Fourteen at the time of the shooting, Colt Gray has pleaded not guilty
to a total of 55 counts, including murder. A judge has set a status
hearing for mid-March.
Investigators said Colt Gray carefully planned the Sept. 4, 2024,
shooting at the school attended by 1,900 students.
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Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect
Colt Gray, reacts after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder
and involuntary manslaughter at Barrow County Courthouse in Winder,
Ga., Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Abbey Cutrer/Atlanta
Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
He boarded the school bus with a semiautomatic, assault-style rifle
in his book bag, the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster
board, investigators said. He left his second-period class and
emerged from a bathroom with the gun and shot people in a classroom
and hallways, investigators said.
Parents' responsibility
Colin Gray knew his son was obsessed with school shooters, even
having a shrine in his bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the
2018 massacre at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,
prosecutors said.
“It wasn’t like one parent missed one warning,” Smith told
reporters. “This was multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time
and, like we said, you just had to do one thing — take that rifle
away and this would have been prevented.”
Jennifer and James Crumbley, the first U.S. parents held criminally
responsible for a mass school shooting committed by a child, are
serving 10-year prison terms for involuntary manslaughter after
their son Ethan killed four students and wounded others in Michigan
in 2021.
Colin Gray was the first such parent to be charged in Georgia. Smith
said Marcee Gray had seen what happened in Michigan and asked her
husband to remove the weapons as a result. “So Michigan was able to
move the needle to the point that it almost stopped this tragedy,”
he said. “We hope we’ve moved the needle a little further.”
Legislative changes
Georgia lawmakers last year passed a school safety bill in response
to the shooting. It directs state officials to create an alert
system, including the names of students who an investigation has
found threatened violence or committed violence at schools.
It also requires law enforcement to notify schools when officers
learn a child has threatened death or injury to someone at a school,
the implementation of mobile panic alert buttons at schools, quicker
transfers of records when students switch schools and mental health
coordinators in each of the state’s 180 school districts.
Legislators also approved a request by Gov. Brian Kemp to spend an
extra $50 million on school safety.
____
Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed
reporting.
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