Sentencing hearing begins for Colin Gray, father who gave gun to Apalachee High School shooter
Colin Gray, the father of a teenager who killed two students and two teachers in a shooting at Georgia's Apalachee High School, is back in court on Thursday morning for the start of his sentencing hearing.
Gray's hearing comes days after his son, 16-year-old Colt Gray, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The teen had pleaded guilty on Friday to 55 counts, including murder, avoiding a trial.
In March, a jury found Colin Gray guilty of 27 charges, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty to children, for the 2024 shooting.
His prosecution marked the third time a parent has been charged for their connection to a mass shooting carried out by their child, and the first adult charged in connection with a school shooting in Georgia.
The Georgia man faces up to 30 years in prison for the second-degree murder charges and up to 180 years in total.
Judge Nicholas Primm had previously ruled that cameras must be turned off when victims and their families testified during Colin Gray's hearing, citing how that testimony could impact future jurors in his son's upcoming case. With the recent changes, it is not clear whether that order will remain in place.
A deadly shooting at a Georgia high school
Investigators say that then-14-year-old Colt Gray meticulously planned the shooting, mimicking details of other mass killings ahead of time before bringing a rifle to school hidden in his book bag.
Two teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, and 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were killed in the shooting. Another teacher and eight students were wounded.
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Colin Gray gave his son the weapon used in the shooting and ammunition despite multiple warning signs that the boy's mental state was deteriorating.
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 Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors said.
"After seeing sign after sign of his son's deteriorating mental state, his violence, his school shooter obsession, the defendant had sufficient warning that his son was a bomb just waiting to go off," Barrow County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Brooks told jurors. "And instead of disarming him, he gave him the detonator."
While Colin Gray admitted to giving his son the rifle, he said he was hoping to bond with the teen during hunting trips and at the gun range.
Colin Gray's defense has argued that Colt Gray had intentionally hidden his violent plans from his father and pointed to how Colin Gray had sought help from a counseling service weeks before the shooting.
