(The Lion)–The father of a Georgia school shooter was found guilty last week of giving his son the gun he used to kill four people, and is facing almost 200 years in prison.

Colin Gray was arrested on Sept. 5, 2024, one day after his son carried out a school shooting that killed four people. He was the second parent in U.S. history to be charged for their child’s school shooting, according to Piedmont Judicial Circuit District Attorney Brad Smith.

A jury convicted Gray of 27 out of 29 charges, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct and cruelty to children.

Colt Gray, then 14 years old, carried an AR-15 rifle, a birthday gift from his dad, into Apalachee High School. He rode the bus to school that morning and concealed the gun with a poster sticking out of his backpack.

He killed two students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14 years old, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. He also injured nine other people during the shooting, which took less than a minute.

“For 41 seconds,” the prosecutor emphasized to the jury. “Those 41 seconds forever altered the lives of the students of Apalachee High School, their parents and everyone in this community. But his father, Colin, the man he lived with, bears responsibility, too.”

The Gray family moved homes several times throughout Colt Gray’s younger childhood, his mother Marcee Gray said.

The boy’s parents, while still legally married, were separated at the time of their son’s attack, and the father had custody of their three children. Marcee Gray struggled with addiction and had other run-ins with the law resulting in some incarceration time, resulting in the revoking her custodial rights.

Colt Gray had been enrolled at Apalachee for less than a month before the shooting and attended school for about seven days.

In his testimony, Colin Gray said he took his son hunting for the first time when he was 12.

“This is the thing I need people to understand,” he said. “The gun was a thing that him and I used to bond with and I was very clear on the rules, right? No loaded guns in the house ever, and he abided by those rules; he respected the weapon.”

A history of anger issues

Multiple witnesses during the trial revealed Colt Gray had anger issues with frequent outbursts, sometimes physical. Colin Gray said his son would get very angry when he wouldn’t buy him the things he wanted, such as video games, and would sometimes “bull rush” him if arguments escalated to that point.

One of these instances, he said, was when he refused to give his son Zoloft, an antidepressant medication. His mother had been giving him the pills when he was living with her, but he had since moved back to live with his dad.

Gray explained he wanted to take his son to the doctor before giving him prescription pills. “I told him I don’t want this. We need to go see somebody. This is not like taking an aspirin.”

Texts with Colt Gray’s grandmother revealed he would have angry “manic” episodes with her over the Zoloft as well, demanding she bring him some.

Despite the angry outbursts, the father argued he never noticed signs that indicated his son wanted to kill people.

“He never once made a threat to me or his sister or brother or anybody that I know of, going for the gun,” he said. “He never made that kind of action or movement towards a gun, made a threat, never said anything about a gun.”

After watching surveillance footage of the school shooting in the courtroom, Colin Gray broke down in tears.

“I don’t know if anybody could ever see that kind of evil,” he choked out. “It’s like the Colt I knew, the relationship I had, there’s this whole other side of Colt that I didn’t know existed.”

‘There were many signs’

Area residents called for Colin Gray to be held accountable for not realizing the mental distress his son was under and for giving him a deadly weapon in the midst of it.

“There were many signs,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. “He gave his child who obviously had some violent tendencies a tool that could be used for violence.”

“I would have never given my 14-year-old child a firearm like that. … I think most parents wouldn’t have done that,” Barrow County District Attorney Smith said. “God gave us a duty to protect our children. And I hope that we remember that – as parents, as community members … because that is our God-given duty.”

The first case of parents legally held responsible for their child’s mass shooting happened in Michigan, where both parents were sentenced to 10-15 years in prison following their child’s attack in 2021.

Colin Gray’s sentence is yet to be determined, but his possible 180 years in prison sets a stunning precedent in parent accountability.

“There is a very clear message sent from this case,” area attorney Alex Weatherby told the media. “It is, if you are a gun owner you need to be a responsible gun owner. You should make sure that folks in your life that have mental health challenges, that have a proclivity towards violence, do not have access to your weapons. And that is particularly true for your children.”

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Law&Crime Trials)