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    • Case against Colin Gray, father of Georgia school shooting suspect, tests limits of parental guilt
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    Case against Colin Gray, father of Georgia school shooting suspect, tests limits of parental guilt

    Vaseline Posted on

    Prosecutors’ swift decision to charge the father of the 14-year-old suspect in the Georgia high school shooting is a new test of whether parents can be held criminally liable for the actions of their children.

    The charges against Colin Gray come months after the parents of a Michigan school shooting were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the first parents in the U.S. to be convicted of the mass shooting of their child.

    While few details are known about the case against the 54-year-old Gray, Georgia authorities arrested him Thursday on suspicion of allowing his son to possess a gun.

    Gray made his first court appearance Friday morning, separate from his son, Colt Gray, 14, who had appeared earlier. The judge said the son faces four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of two students and two teachers in a shooting Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, where the suspect is a freshman. Nine others were wounded in the attack.

    Colin Gray rocked back and forth in his chair and looked down as the judge announced he was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of second-degree cruelty to children.

    Brad Smith, district attorney for the Piedmont Judicial Circuit, later said at a news conference that he “didn’t want to send a message” by charging a parent of a child first charged in a mass shooting in Georgia.

    “I hope that prosecutors will use every tool at their disposal to hold people accountable for the crimes they commit,” Smith said.

    The teenage suspect, who was charged as an adult, was already known to police.

    In May 2023, the father and son were questioned by local authorities in connection with threats to carry out a school shooting, two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News. But authorities did not arrest the teen because they could not link him to an online account that made the threats, according to investigative documents.

    The tip about the school shooting threat came to the FBI from a user on Discord, a chat platform popular with online video game enthusiasts. The FBI traced the alleged threat to an account registered to a person with the same name as Colin Gray.

    However, his son denied making online threats. Ultimately, local authorities determined that the FBI tip did not match information discovered during the investigation, the documents show.

    Colin Gray told investigators he taught his son about “firearms and safety” and how to hunt, the transcripts show, while the child lived with him while he was separated from his wife.

    Gray told investigators that if his son threatened him, he would be “enraged and all the guns would disappear.”

    But at some point after the contact with authorities, Gray bought his son an AR-15-style rifle as a gift, law enforcement sources said.

    There are some similarities to the case in Oxford, Michigan, where a 15-year-old committed a mass shooting at his high school in 2021.

    His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were held partially responsible, with Oakland County prosecutors convincing juries at their separate trials this year that they repeatedly ignored warning signs that a “reasonable person” would have recognized, including their son’s deteriorating mental health and social isolation, and that they could have done more to prevent their son from getting access to a gun. The parents had purchased a semi-automatic pistol as an early Christmas present.

    The Crumbleys were eventually sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 to 15 years.

    But the charges against Gray are much more severe. The judge said Friday that he could face up to 180 years in prison if found guilty on all charges.

    Smith said Friday that the second-degree murder charge against Gray is based on “cruelty to children.” He was indicted on two counts in connection with the two students who were killed.

    The four involuntary manslaughter charges are based on the four deceased victims, Smith said, and could depend on whether someone acted “recklessly.”

    Georgia law prohibits the sale or delivery of pistols and revolvers to minors under the age of 18. However, limited exceptions are available for minors who wish to handle firearms, such as during a hunting course, at a shooting range, or on their parents’ property with permission.

    Smith would not say whether Gray had gun locks or other mechanisms to securely store his firearms in the home.

    J. Tom Morgan, a former prosecutor in DeKalb County, Georgia, who teaches criminology at Western Carolina University, said he expects Gray’s defense will seek to have the charges dismissed.

    But while Georgia, unlike other states, does not have a law requiring “secure storage” of firearms to keep them out of reach of children, Morgan said parents still have an obligation to make sure guns are not easily obtained, especially when their child might be prone to violence.

    “I grew up in a rural community in Georgia where there is strong support for the Second Amendment,” Morgan said, “but the people I know, the hunters, are very responsible. If you’re going to own a gun, you have to do it responsibly.”

    Andrew Fleischman, a criminal defense attorney in Georgia, said the case against Gray hinges in part on whether prosecutors can show he knowingly disregarded the substantial and unjustifiable risk that other minors could suffer excessive physical or emotional pain.

    “If a father bought his child a gun knowing that the child had threatened to shoot classmates, he knowingly disregarded that risk,” Fleischman said. “The risk is likely substantial because of the prior threats, and the act is unjustified because there is no good reason to buy your teenager” an AR-15-style rifle.

    Michael Dezsi, an attorney representing Jennifer Crumbley in her appeal of her conviction, said the Georgia charges are an example of shifting blame to parents while states fail to pass meaningful gun control laws.

    As with the Crumbleys’ son, who pleaded guilty as an adult and was sentenced to life in prison, Dezsi said it is “contradictory” to charge shooters as adults but then also hold their parents responsible.

    “It’s a very dangerous path and it sets a bad precedent if we start charging parents for actions that look more like negligence and can be resolved in a civilized manner,” he said.

    Still, gun safety groups are concerned that another mass shooting has occurred, despite the high-profile trial in Michigan that received national attention as the first time the parents of a mass murderer were convicted.

    “That ruling should have sent a clear message to people like Mr. Gray,” Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement. “But unfortunately for the victims and their families, he failed to heed that message in order to prevent a tragedy.”

    “The fact that Mr. Gray gave his son a weapon of war as a gift — months after he was under investigation for making threats to shoot up a school — is a complete and utter disregard for his responsibility both as a gun owner and as a member of the community,” he said.

    Vaseline
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