His son is charged in a deadly school shooting. Why a Georgia man is now on trial
Opening statements began Monday in the trial of Colin Gray, whose son faces charges in connection with a deadly mass shooting at a Georgia high school in September 2024. Gray is charged with 29 felony counts, including second-degree murder and manslaughter.
Prosecutors say Gray bought an AR-style rifle for his son, Colt Gray, as a Christmas gift in 2023, even after local law enforcement had interviewed the father and son about online threats to carry out a school shooting.
Prosecutors also say Gray was aware of what they say was his son’s obsession with school shooters. They say Colt erected a shrine above his computer dedicated to Nikolas Cruz, who killed 14 students and three adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Investigators also found several notebooks in which Colt Gray drew images depicting deadly shootings.
Colin Gray has pleaded not guilty. He faces up to 180 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
The shooting
The case stems from a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. Authorities say Colt Gray, then 14, used the rifle he got for Christmas to kill two students and two teachers and wound nine others.
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An estimated 3 million children in the U.S. are exposed to shootings per year, according to Everytown Research & Policy.
Police say Colt surrendered and admitted to the shooting.
Now 16, he faces 55 felony counts, including four counts of malice murder, as an adult. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial date has not yet been set.
When authorities visited the Grays’ home in 2023, Colin Gray said he was teaching his son about “firearms and safety.” If he found out his son actually threatened to carry out a school shooting, he said he “would be mad as hell and then all the guns will go away.”
Holding parents accountable
The charges against Colin Gray are part of a broader push to hold the parents of minors who commit deadly attacks accountable.
In April 2024, Jennifer and James Crumbley — whose then-15-year-old son Ethan Crumbley shot and killed four people at Oxford High School in Michigan in November 2021 — became the first parents of a school shooter to be convicted in the U.S.
Both were found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.
Prosecutors in that case said the Crumbleys ignored several warning signs in the days leading up to the shooting, and had just bought their son the weapon he used in the shooting.
Oxford High School officials had even called them to the school the morning of the shooting after disturbing drawings were found on Ethan’s math test. School officials testified that the Crumbleys said they needed to return to work and could not stay home with Ethan, so he remained at school that day.
Ethan Crumbley pleaded guilty to 24 charges, including first-degree premeditated murder and terrorism causing death in 2021. He’s now serving life in prison.
Jeffrey Rupnow, the father of a Wisconsin school shooter, is set to stand trial on charges that he gave his daughter access to the gun she used in the attack.
Natalie Rupnow, 15, shot a teacher and a student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison and wounded six others before she died by suicide in December 2024.
Prosecutors say Jeffrey Rupnow told investigators his daughter was struggling to cope with her parents’ divorce and that he bought her the guns to connect with her. He reportedly also said that while he kept the guns in a safe, he had given her the code to unlock it.
Rupnow faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He could be sentenced to up to 18 years’ imprisonment.
In 2023, Robert Crimo Jr., the father of a man charged in a Fourth of July parade shooting in Chicago’s Highland Park area that left seven people dead, pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.
Prosecutors argued the shooter, Robert Crimo III, who was 19 at the time, was too young to obtain a gun license without being sponsored by a parent or guardian. Crimo Jr. sponsored his son, even though just months earlier a relative reported to police that Crimo III had a collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone.”
He was sentenced to 60 days in jail and 100 hours of community service. Crimo III is serving seven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole plus 2,400 years.
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