A father’s Christmas gift has come with a crushing price. Colin Gray was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for handing his teenage son the rifle used in the deadly Apalachee High School shooting that left four people dead and shook a Georgia community.
The 55-year-old’s punishment lands just days after his son, Colt Gray, received life behind bars with no chance of parole. The 16-year-old had pleaded guilty to murder and other charges tied to the September 4, 2024, shooting at the school about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Judge Nicholas Primm, who presided over both sentencings, didn’t hold back when addressing the father. “It is clear you failed as a parent,” he said, while acknowledging the difficulty of punishing negligence when there was no intent to commit a crime.
“My heart aches for everyone that was there that day, for all of you that have been impacted by it. But the law requires that I set aside emotion,” Primm told the courtroom.
Colin Gray is part of a rare group of American parents criminally charged after their children were accused of shootings.
A jury found him guilty in March of second-degree murder in the deaths of 14-year-olds Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Georgia law treats second-degree murder in this context as causing a child’s death through cruelty to children. He was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the killings of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
Another teacher and eight students were hurt that day, with seven of them struck by gunfire.
During the sentencing hearing, grieving families made their pain known. Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son was killed, called the tragedy entirely avoidable. “This wasn’t unavoidable.
This was preventable. Because of the choices made inside the Gray household, four families were handed life sentences of grief,” she said.
Shayna Aspinwall, whose husband was killed, pointed out that while Colin Gray didn’t pull the trigger, he made the weapon accessible to a minor. She urged the judge to consider “the families left behind who must carry the grief and trauma for the rest of our lives.”
Prosecutors detailed how the rifle came to be in Colt Gray’s hands in the first place. It was reportedly a Christmas gift from his father, complete with ammunition, a gun sight, and other shooting gear.
Investigators say the teenager boarded a school bus with the semiautomatic rifle wrapped in poster board, the barrel sticking out. He left his second-period class, headed to a bathroom, then emerged with the weapon and opened fire in the hallway and a classroom.
In the weeks before the attack, Colt Gray reportedly showed signs of declining mental health. He was part of an online “true crime community” where young members discussed an obsession with mass shooters, according to testimony.
The teen’s mother, Marcee Gray, who was separated from Colin at the time, told investigators she had argued with her estranged husband weeks before the shooting, pleading with him to secure his guns and restrict their son’s access.
The courtroom saw dueling sentencing requests. Defense attorney Brian Hobbs pushed for 10 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation, arguing that Colt Gray hid the depth of his involvement in the online communities. Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith wanted 80 years, insisting the father ignored “a substantial and unjustifiable risk.”
“This was the risk that he was ignoring, that there would be a mass shooting of children at a school, and he gave his son the exact tool he would need to accomplish this,” Smith said.
Colin Gray isn’t the first parent to face such consequences. Jennifer and James Crumbley made history as the first U. S.
parents charged after their son Ethan killed four students at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021. They’re serving 10-year sentences for involuntary manslaughter, a benchmark the defense pointed to as a guide.
Judge Primm called these cases “divisive,” noting that without the son’s actions, the father wouldn’t be in this position. But he stressed that Colin Gray could have locked up the guns, kept ammunition out of the house, or gotten his son counseling.
“You were convicted because the warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter and you didn’t get him help and you didn’t remove his access to the guns,” Primm said.
After announcing the sentence, the judge turned to the court: “This only closes the legal chapter for this horror. The pain, the heartache, they continue. I understand that.
I hope all of you know this community loves you, and I ask that God gives you peace.”
The legal chapter is closed, but the questions linger — could anything have stopped this tragedy before it began?
