Father who gave gun to Georgia school shooting suspect for Christmas is guilty of 2nd-degree murder

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 of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter Tuesday.

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 is one of a number of parents prosecuted after their children were accused in fatal shootings across the country.

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.

He showed little emotion as the verdict was read and then as he watched each juror being polled by the judge. Deputies then handcuffed him behind his back as he stood at the defense table, consulting 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 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.