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WINDER, Ga. (AP) — In a court decision on Tuesday, a Georgia father was found guilty of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for providing his teenage son with the firearm used in a tragic shooting at a high school. This incident resulted in the deaths of two students and two educators.
The jury deliberated for under two hours before delivering a guilty verdict against Colin Gray for his role in the September 2024 attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, located northeast of Atlanta. Gray’s conviction is part of a growing trend where parents are held accountable when their children are involved in deadly shootings nationwide.
Colin Gray faced conviction for second-degree murder following the deaths of two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Under Georgia law, second-degree murder refers to causing a child’s death through acts of cruelty. Additionally, Gray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
The incident also left another teacher and eight students injured. Gray was further found guilty on several counts of reckless conduct and cruelty to children.
Gray exhibited minimal reaction as the verdict was announced, observing silently while the judge polled each juror. Afterward, deputies restrained him with handcuffs as he conferred with his attorney at the defense table. His sentencing will occur at a later date. For second-degree murder, the sentence ranges from 10 to 30 years, while involuntary manslaughter carries a possible penalty of one to 10 years.
Some relatives of victims wept as the verdicts were read. They declined to comment after court. Gray’s defense lawyers left the courthouse 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 — who testified that she had urged Colin Gray to take any guns and lock them inside his truck so they were not accessible to their son — declined to comment when reached by phone after the verdict. She and Colin Gray were separated in the months leading up to the shooting, and Colt lived mostly with his father during that time. She wasn’t charged in connection to the shooting.
Prosecutors said Gray gave his son, Colt, access to a gun and ammunition “after receiving sufficient warning that Colt Gray would harm and endanger the bodily safety of another.”
Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, was indicted on a total of 55 counts, including murder. He has pleaded not guilty and the judge in his case 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.
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 then shot people in a classroom and hallways, investigators said.
Colin Gray had given his son the gun as a gift the Christmas before the shooting and allowed him to have access to the gun and ammunition, despite his awareness that his son’s mental health had deteriorated, a prosecutor said.
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 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, prosecutors said.