CNN
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The father of the 14-year-old suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder in connection with this week’s attack in Georgia that left four people dead. The charges exceed the legal boundaries of parental responsibility for an alleged firearms crime against a child.

The case against Colin Gray, 54, is only the second time in America that a parent has been charged in connection with a mass shooting by a minor, said former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin. The charges — which include four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, with more possible — are the most serious ever filed against the parent of an alleged school shooter.

Each charge against Gray accuses the father of “providing a firearm to Colt Gray with the knowledge that he was a threat to himself and others,” according to his Barrow County arrest warrant. Colin Gray has not entered a plea; Colt Gray has not entered a plea to four counts of murder, and more charges are expected against him.

“The core question in the case against the father is going to be recklessness, foreseeability and how he handled the gun in relation to his son,” Toobin told CNN Thursday night.

Colin Gray could face up to 180 years in prison if found guilty on all counts, state Judge Currie Mingledorff said during a hearing Friday.

Experts told CNN that Gray’s case hinges on the father and son’s interactions with police more than a year before Wednesday’s mass shooting; the teen’s access to the gun used in the attack; and what the father knew about the boy’s mental state. It all builds a picture of the teen’s tumultuous home life.

In May 2023, law enforcement questioned Colt and his father about online threats “to commit a school shooting,” the FBI said. Colt denied making the threats at the time, and his father told authorities that his son did not have unsupervised access to shotguns in the home.

Just seven months later, the suspect’s father bought the firearm allegedly used in the mass shooting as a Christmas present for his son, two law enforcement sources told CNN. The AR-15-style rifle was purchased at a local gun store as a Christmas gift, the source said.

The charges against Gray come just five months after the parents of the teenager who fatally shot four students in a 2021 school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, were both sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison following their convictions for involuntary manslaughter.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were the first parents to be held criminally liable for a mass shooting at a school committed by their child. The country continues to grapple with the scourge of gunfire on campus and mass shootings in places that are otherwise considered safe.

There are already striking similarities between the shootings in Georgia and Michigan: Both shootings left four people dead and others injured at school after a teenager’s parents gave them the deadly weapon as a gift.

Gray’s case is reminiscent of the Crumbleys’ in that all involve “a gun that could end up in the hands of a child,” CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson said Thursday.

“What that case in Michigan did was put the world and the country on notice that as a parent, if you are in possession of a firearm, you are responsible for the actions of your son,” former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney Bernarda Villalona told CNN.

“You have to be aware of your son’s capabilities, what he’s going through, what access he has to these firearms that can be deadly.”

Despite the similarities between the Michigan and Georgia cases, there are some key differences. And since the Georgia investigation is still in its early stages, experts said it’s too early to say exactly how a Gray trial might unfold and compare to the Crumbleys’.

Like the Crumbleys, Gray faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter. He is also charged with second-degree murder, a much more serious offense.

The second-degree murder charge applies to the two 14-year-olds killed on Wednesday, Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, but not to the two slain teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, the Barrow County district attorney said Friday.

“Second-degree murder is different in Georgia than it is in other states. It’s a fairly new charge, and it specifically targets second-degree child cruelty,” said Prosecutor Brad Smith.

“If you commit cruelty to children in the second degree that results in death, that is murder in the second degree.”

“I’m not trying to send a message,” Smith added of the charges against Gray. “I’m just trying to use the tools in my arsenal to prosecute people for the crimes they commit.”

During the Crumbley trials, prosecutors argued that the parents were “grossly negligent” by giving their teenage son, Ethan Crumbley, access to the gun he used and by ignoring signs of his deteriorating mental health.

As with the Crumbley trials, a trial in Gray’s case will likely examine whether the Georgia shooting was reasonably foreseeable and whether the father acted recklessly and negligently, CNN experts said.

And it would be difficult to argue that Gray was unaware of the safety concerns surrounding his son, given the questions he was asked by police in May 2023 — more than a year before the shooting — according to Karen McDonald, who prosecuted Ethan and his parents.

McDonald said the key to the Georgia case is how Colt allegedly obtained the gun just months after his father was alerted to the alleged online threats.

“It’s a deadly weapon. And it’s a 14-year-old young man. The first question has to be, where did he get that weapon? And the details that are coming out are very disturbing,” McDonald said.

The father who gave his son a gun as a gift is violating state law, Villalona said: “In Georgia, it is illegal to give a minor a firearm” — though there are exceptions for hunting, at a shooting range and at home with adult permission.

“This is going to be a prosecution for gross negligence: the extent to which you put a firearm in your son’s hands and knew the potential dangers and how your son behaves,” said Jackson, the legal analyst.

Gray’s actions reflect a “complete and utter disregard for responsibility,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization.

The Crumbley cases showed that “parents can be held accountable – and should be held accountable – when they disregard public safety,” he said. It “should have sent a clear message to people like Mr. Gray, but unfortunately for the victims and their families, he failed to heed that message in order to prevent a tragedy.”

Gray did not request bail during a hearing Friday, where he was represented by a public defender. Colt’s attorney did not request bail during a hearing Friday. CNN is working to identify and reach both attorneys.

Experts told CNN that prosecutors will also investigate how much Colin Gray knew about his son’s mental state when he bought the gun for him.

When authorities searched Colt’s bedroom, they found documents they believe he wrote that referenced previous school shootings, including references to the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

It is unclear whether Colt’s father knew anything about the documents at all.

In Michigan, the Crumbley lawsuits centered on a crucial meeting between school officials, Ethan and his parents the morning of the shooting, after the teen made disturbing notes on a math paper. The school recommended that the parents immediately remove him from class and seek mental health treatment, but they refused, prosecutors and school officials said. About two hours after Ethan was sent back to class, he pulled the gun from his backpack and opened fire at the school.

It’s too early to say whether the elder Gray will face the same legal scrutiny he faced in the Crumbley cases, as it’s unclear what exactly the father knew leading up to this week’s shooting, former FBI Director Andrew McCabe told CNN Thursday night.

“In (the Michigan case), there was a situation — a very rare situation — where the parents knew two things immediately before the shooting occurred: one, that their son had a gun that they had given him; and two, that he had mental health issues in school and that he had very violent notes and comments in his notebook,” McCabe said.

In the Georgia case, “we don’t yet have that same kind of timeline that we know of between what the father knew in the days and hours leading up to the shooting,” he said.

The case against Gray “will ultimately come down to the knowledge that this father had about his son,” Villalona said, adding that she expects a similar outcome as in the Crumbley cases.

McDonald, the Michigan district attorney, said parents should do more to prevent their children from getting guns, regardless of whether the father of the Georgia suspect is found responsible for the Apalachee High School shooting.

“It takes less than 10 seconds to install a cable lock — 10 seconds that would prevent tragedies like this,” she said, “and responsible gun owners know that.”