Father of Georgia school shooter sentenced to 15 years in prison in landmark murder case

CNN

By Eric Levenson, Isabel Rosales, Devon M. Sayers, CNN

Winder, Georgia (CNN) — Colin Gray, the Georgia father whose teenage son Colt killed four people in a 2024 school shooting, was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison in a landmark case testing the limits of who can be held responsible for a mass shooting.

“Mr. Gray committed crimes, but his crimes are tethered to the crimes committed by his son, and that makes the situation a little unique,” Judge Nicholas Primm said in announcing the sentence.

“It matters that you didn’t have actual knowledge that Colt was going to school to do that. It matters that you didn’t intentionally commit a crime. It matters that you didn’t plan an attack. It matters that you didn’t seek to harm anyone. It matters that you didn’t pull a trigger,” he said.

Wearing a striped prison uniform, Colin Gray, 55, was breathing heavily as the sentence was delivered. He was then escorted out of the courtroom in shackles.

Gray declined to address the court before his sentencing. Defense attorney Brian Hobbs told CNN he plans to appeal the first-of-its-kind conviction.

The sentencing represents the end of a harrowing road that began on September 4, 2024, when his son, then 14, fatally shot two students and two teachers and injured seven others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.

Gray was convicted of murder and manslaughter earlier this year for buying his son an AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas gift and leaving it unsecured — despite warnings the teen was a danger to others. The charges were based on his “criminal negligence” rather than any intention to cause them.

His trial is part of a broader push to hold the parents of juvenile mass shooters accountable. He is the first parent of a school shooter to be convicted of murder.

The case bears close similarities to that of James and Jennifer Crumbley, whose then-15-year-old son killed four students in 2021 at his high school in Oxford, Michigan. The Crumbleys were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison. Their son was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The week has been emotionally fraught for the Winder community.

Colt, now 16, pleaded guilty last Friday to 55 felony counts, including four counts of malice murder. His three-day sentencing hearing featured emotional victim impact statements, tapes of his confessions to police and insights into his twisted desire for infamy and obsession with school shooters.

He was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole in the same courtroom and by the same judge as his father.

Meanwhile, Apalachee High School’s first day of class is Friday.

Judge’s sentence is closer to defense request

Several family members of the victims told CNN they were disappointed with the 15-year sentence, saying they felt it was too lenient.

Primm’s sentence was far closer to the defense’s request than the prosecution’s.

Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Colin Gray to 80 years in prison.

“He is the reason four people are dead, seven were injured and countless others were traumatized, and he is the reason a 16-year-old boy was sentenced two days ago to the rest of his life in prison,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said in court Thursday morning.

Hobbs, the defense attorney, asked for a 20-year sentence, with 10 years served in prison and the rest on probation. Gray has already served just under two years in custody since his arrest a day after the shooting.

“Was it enough, what Colin did? Obviously not. The jury has said so and Colin accepts that,” Hobbs said. “But it was not nothing, and it was not indifference.”

Victims’ families blame shooter’s father

Earlier in the hearing, victims’ families and survivors, many of whom spoke powerfully at Colt’s sentencing, spoke about their anger at the defendant and memories of their loved ones.

“He was a pathetic excuse for a father,” said Shayna Aspinwall, the wife of victim Ricky Aspinwall. “Ricky was not. He was an amazing dad to two little girls (and) loved them with his whole heart.”

She said she is no longer a teacher because of her post-traumatic stress disorder, and her 7-year-old daughter is now in therapy. “Colin could not take his son to therapy; therefore, I have to take mine,” she said.

Breanna Schermerhorn said she was just a teenager when she gave birth to Mason, who was killed in the attack, and she said she struggled as a single parent.

“There is a world of a difference between struggling to parent, and refusing to parent,” she said. “Mr. Gray should not only live with what his son did, he should also live every single day with what he failed to do.”

Ismael Angulo, whose brother Christian was killed, called the defendant a “complete failure of a father.”

“He made a choice to buy that rifle, he made a choice to ignore every red flag, and because of his choices, my little brother Christian and three others … are gone, and so many others will carry permanent scars for the rest of their lives,” he said.

Terry McElhannon, the grandfather of Taylor Jones, who was wounded in the attack, pointed an accusatory finger directly at Colin Gray while speaking.

“Why are we here today? It’s because of him,” he said, his arm extended. “His action and his neglect are responsible for what happened here. Though he did not shoot the gun, he bought the bullets.”

What happened at the father’s trial

In a two-week trial in February and March, Barrow County prosecutors argued the boy’s father acted with “criminal negligence” and was a proximate cause of the shooting. His defense team argued he was unaware of his son’s violent plans and had taken steps to get him help for his mental health struggles.

The state’s case included emotional testimony from students and teachers, police interviews with Colin Gray, photos showing unsecured firearms and ammunition in a bedroom closet, and testimony from the teen’s mother, grandmother and sister about Colt’s spiraling mental health.

Marcee Gray, the defendant’s estranged wife, testified their son had anxiety, was easily agitated and suffered panic attacks. She said it was “very obvious” he needed professional help, but her husband “just didn’t want to deal with it.”

The jury saw body-camera footage from May 21, 2023, when deputies with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office visited Colt and Colin Gray’s home after receiving an FBI tip about an online threat to shoot up a school. Colt denied posting the threat, and law enforcement was ultimately unable to substantiate the tip.

Colin Gray bought his son the AR-15-style rifle later that year as a Christmas gift.

The defense called just one witness: Colin Gray himself. He said he had scheduled counseling at school for Colt’s mental health issues and did not ever perceive his son as a threat.

“He’s a good kid,” the father said through tears. “He wasn’t perfect, nor was I, but to do something that heinous, I don’t know that anybody can see that kind of evil. The Colt I knew, the relationship I had, there was this whole other side of Colt I didn’t know existed.”

In a tense cross-examination, he acknowledged multiple firearms were stored in a closet, unsecured and unlocked, and he said Colt sometimes kept the rifle in his bedroom. He struggled to explain why Colt did not attend school for his entire eighth-grade year, according to school records. Colt attended Apalachee High School for only a few days before the attack.

Colin Gray also admitted he was aware that his son had been physically violent, had a photo of a school shooter on his bedroom wall and had texted a few weeks before the attack, “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands.”

The jury deliberated for less than two hours and convicted him of all 27 charges: two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, 18 counts of second-degree cruelty to children and five counts of reckless conduct.

Marcee Gray, the teen’s mother, was not charged in the case. She had lost custody of Colt because of her struggles with drugs and alcohol and did not possess the firearms, Smith said.

“We found what she did to be morally reprehensible. We do not believe she is a good mother, in my opinion,” he said. “But at the end of the day, she did not have custody of Colt, she did not have proximity to Colt, and she was not the one that provided him the firearms.”

Colin Gray’s trial also revealed the shooting was nearly prevented. The morning of the shooting, school officials and resource officers went to intercept Colt after he made several concerning comments. But in a stranger-than-fiction mix-up, they confused him with another student named Kolton Gray.

Colt then armed himself with the AR-15-style rifle — which he had hidden in his backpack — and fired indiscriminately into a math class and shot several people in the hallway.

Teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were killed.

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CNN’s Sarah Hutter, Moriah Thomas and Maxime Tamsett contributed to this report.