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A Georgia man was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for giving his son the weapon he used to kill two students and two teachers at his school.
Colin Gray's sentence comes days after his son, Colt Gray, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the September 4, 2024, shooting at Apalachee High School, located 45 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. Colt Gray had pleaded guilty to murder and other charges.
A defense attorney for Colin Gray asked the judge for a sentence of 10 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation. The district attorney argued that Gray deserved an 80-year prison sentence.
Judge Nicholas Primm, who also sentenced Colt Gray earlier this week, noted that all of Colin Gray's crimes were acts of negligence “linked to the tragedy committed by his son.”
“My heart aches for everyone who was there that day, for all of you who have been affected by this. But the law requires me to put emotion aside. I cannot sentence with passion. I am tasked with the near-impossible job of sentencing you without passion despite the immeasurable pain you caused,” Primm declared.
The elder Gray is one of a handful of American parents who have been criminally charged for their children's use of weapons.
A jury found Colin Gray guilty in March of second-degree murder for the deaths of two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Georgia law defines second-degree murder as causing the death of a minor while committing the crime of cruelty to children. Gray was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
Another teacher and eight other students were injured; seven of them sustained gunshot wounds.
Familias presentan declaraciones de impacto
The victims' families condemned what they described as Gray's failures as a parent and urged the judge to impose the maximum possible sentence.
“This was not inevitable. This was preventable. Because of the decisions made inside the Gray home, four families were given life sentences of grief,” said Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son was killed.
Shayna Aspinwall, whose husband died, stated: “He didn't pull the trigger, but he bought and left a firearm accessible to a minor.” She added that the sentence must take into account “the families left behind, who must carry the grief and trauma for the rest of our lives.”
They say Colin Gray missed warning signs
Prosecutors maintain that Colin Gray gave his son the rifle as a Christmas present, along with ammunition, a scope, and other shooting accessories.
Investigator Jason Smith of the Barrow County Sheriff's Office testified that Colt Gray brought the semi-automatic rifle onto the school bus with the barrel sticking out and wrapped in cardboard. The teenager left his second-period class and went to a restroom; he then emerged with the rifle and fired at people in the hallway and a classroom, the investigator noted.
Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, had shown signs of psychological deterioration in the weeks leading up to the murders, according to testimony during his sentencing hearing. He belonged to an online “school shooter show community” where he and other youths discussed their obsession with perpetrators of mass shootings, an investigator stated.
The teenager's mother, Marcee Gray, who was separated from Colin Gray, told investigators that she had argued with her estranged husband weeks before the shooting, asking him to secure his weapons and restrict their son's access.
Diferencia en las recomendaciones de sentencia
Colin Gray's attorney argued that Colt Gray “actively hid the depth of his involvement” in an online community obsessed with mass shooters. The red flags listed by prosecutors were sporadic and “surrounded by periods of a child who laughed, who was brilliant, who loved his computer, video games, who played guitar, who went into the woods with his father,” attorney Brian Hobbs stated.
A multi-decade sentence would, in practice, amount to a “death in prison” for his 55-year-old client, he argued. By imposing essentially the same sentence on Gray as on his son, the judge would be erasing the line “between the harm a person intends to cause and the harm a person fails to prevent,” Hobbs argued.
Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith replied that Colin Gray “was convicted for what he did know.” Gray ignored “a substantial and unjustifiable risk,” Smith affirmed, while showing photos and news articles about the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida that were hanging on the wall of Colt Gray's bedroom.
“This was the risk he was ignoring: that there would be a mass shooting of children at a school, and he gave his son exactly the tool he would need to pull it off,” Smith noted.
“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 spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Colin Gray is not the first parent to face such charges
In recent years, prosecutors have held parents accountable when they believe they can prove that a parent contributed to a death.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first parents in the United States to face such charges after their son, Ethan, killed four students and wounded others at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021. Like Colin Gray, they did not know about their son's plans, but they had gifted him a weapon before the shooting. They are serving 10-year prison sentences for involuntary manslaughter. Hobbs, the defense attorney, urged the judge to use that sentence as a reference.
[Publicidad]