The prosecutor’s quick decision to charge the father of the 14-year-old suspect in the Georgia high school shooting will be another test of whether parents can be held criminally responsible for the actions of their children.
The charges against Colin Gray came months after the parents of a Michigan school shooter were found guilty of manslaughter, becoming the first parents in the U.S. to be convicted of shooting their child.
No details are available yet on the case of 54-year-old Gray, but authorities in the US state of Georgia arrested him on Thursday. He is accused of allowing his son to possess a weapon.
Gray made his first court appearance Friday morning, separated from his son, Colt Gray, 14, who appeared earlier. The judge said the son is charged with four counts of murder for killing two students and two teachers in a shooting Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, where the suspect is a freshman. Nine other people were injured in the attack.
Colin Gray rocked back and forth in his chair and looked down during his appearance as the judge announced that he was charged with four counts of 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 “did not mean to set an example” when he first brought charges in Georgia against the parent of a child accused of mass murder.
“I would like to see prosecutors use every arsenal and every tool at their disposal to hold people accountable for the crimes they commit,” Smith said.
The juvenile suspect, who was charged as an adult, was already known to law enforcement.
In May 2023, 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. Authorities did not arrest the teenager, however, because they could not link him to an online account from which the threats were made, investigative documents show.
The FBI was tipped off about the school shooting threat by a user of Discord, a chat platform popular with online video game fans. The FBI was able to trace the alleged threat back to an account registered to a person with the same name as Colin Gray.
However, his son denied making any online threats, and local authorities ultimately concluded that the FBI’s lead was inconsistent with information uncovered during the investigation, the documents show.
According to the transcripts, Colin Gray told investigators that he taught his son “firearms and safety” and how to hunt while the child lived with him during his separation from his wife.
If his son had actually made threats, Gray told investigators, he would “be furious and all the guns would disappear.”
But sometime after speaking with authorities, Gray bought his son an AR-15-style rifle as a gift, law enforcement sources said.
There are certain similarities with the case in Oxford, Michigan, where a 15-year-old committed a mass murder at his high school in 2021.
His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were found partially guilty. Oakland County prosecutors convinced jurors in 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 gaining access to a gun. The parents had purchased a semi-automatic pistol as an early Christmas present.
The Crumbleys were ultimately sentenced to ten to 15 years in prison.
But the charges against Gray are far more severe. The judge said Friday that he faces a maximum prison sentence of 180 years if found guilty on all counts.
Smith said Friday that the second-degree murder charge against Gray relates to “cruelty to children” and that he is charged with two counts in connection with the two schoolgirls killed.
The four counts of involuntary manslaughter would relate to the four deceased victims, Smith said, and could depend on whether anyone had exhibited “reckless conduct.”
Georgia law prohibits the sale or distribution of pistols and revolvers to minors under 18 years of age. However, there may be limited exceptions for minors to handle firearms, such as during a hunting class, at a shooting range, or with permission on parental property.
Smith would not say whether Gray had gun locks or other mechanisms to secure his firearms in the house.
J. Tom Morgan, a former prosecutor in DeKalb County, Georgia, and a criminology professor at Western Carolina University, said he expects Gray’s defense will fight to have the charges dismissed.
But while Georgia, unlike other states, does not have a law requiring “safe storage” of firearms to prevent children from accessing them, Morgan says parents still have a responsibility to ensure that guns are not easily accessible, especially if their child may have a tendency toward violence.
“I grew up in a rural community in Georgia where the Second Amendment is very strong,” Morgan said, “but the people I know, the hunters, are very responsible. If you own a gun, you have to use it responsibly.”
Andrew Fleischman, a Georgia criminal defense attorney, said one of the issues in Gray’s case will be whether prosecutors can prove he knowingly ignored the substantial and unjustified 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 ignored that risk,” Fleischman said. “The risk is likely substantial because of the prior threats, and the act is indefensible because there is no good reason to buy your teenager an AR-15-style rifle.”
Attorney Michael Dezsi, who is representing Jennifer Crumbley in her attempt to appeal her conviction, said the Georgia charges are an example of blame being shifted to parents despite states failing to pass meaningful gun laws.
As in the case of the Crumbleys’ son, who pleaded guilty as an adult and was sentenced to life in prison, it is “contradictory,” Dezsi said, to charge the shooters as adults but then also hold their parents responsible.
“This is a very sensitive issue and sets a bad precedent for us to start suing parents for actions that are more akin to negligence and can be resolved through civil litigation,” he said.
Still, gun safety advocacy groups are raising concerns that another mass murder may have occurred, despite the high-profile trial in Michigan that drew national attention because it was the first time the parents of a mass murderer were convicted.
“This 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 to prevent a tragedy.”
“The fact that Mr. Gray gave his son a weapon of war – months after he was investigated for threatening to attack a school at gunpoint – represents a complete violation of his responsibilities, both as a gun owner and as a member of the community,” he said.
