WINDER, United States — A Georgia judge sentenced Colin Gray to 15 years in prison on Thursday, holding him criminally responsible for decisions that gave his troubled teenage son access to the firearm used in the deadly 2024 attack at Apalachee High School.
The sentence followed Gray’s conviction on second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, cruelty to children and reckless-conduct charges.
Prosecutors said he ignored repeated indications that his son posed a serious danger, yet continued to keep firearms available inside their home.
His son, Colt Gray, was 14 when he killed students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, on September 4, 2024. Another teacher and eight students were wounded.
Colt Gray, now 16, pleaded guilty to 55 charges and was sentenced earlier in the week to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Judge Separates Father’s Conduct From Son’s Intent
Judge Nicholas Primm imposed the sentence on Thursday, July 30, 2026, after hearing from victims’ relatives, prosecutors and defence lawyers in Barrow County Superior Court.
Primm said the devastation caused by the school attack could not obscure the legal distinction between the teenager who carried it out and the father convicted of failing to respond to the danger.
“I don’t get to sentence with passion. I have the nearly impossible task of sentencing you without passion, despite the immeasurable heartache that you’ve caused,” Primm said. “On Sept. 4, 2024, lives and families were forever altered.”
He said Gray’s responsibility arose from the choices he made before the killings, including his failure to secure the weapons in his home or obtain adequate care for his son.
“The weight of your crimes is tethered and tied to the acts of someone else, your son,” Primm said. “Two scenarios: You fail the same way in both. You fail to get Colt counseling. You fail to remove the guns from the house.”
Prosecutors had requested an 80-year prison term.
The defence asked for 10 years in custody followed by probation.
Primm chose a substantially shorter sentence than prosecutors sought, saying he was required to punish Gray for his own conduct rather than for the deliberate acts committed by his son.
Warning Signs Preceded the Shooting
The prosecution’s case focused on what Gray knew before the attack and what he did after receiving that information.
Law-enforcement officers visited the family’s home in May 2023 after the Federal Bureau of Investigation received information about an online threat to carry out a school shooting.
Gray acknowledged that firearms were kept in the house, but the investigation at that time did not produce an arrest.
Months later, he gave his son a semiautomatic rifle as a Christmas present and took him shooting.
Prosecutors said he also provided ammunition and related equipment.
Evidence presented in court showed that the teenager had developed an intense fixation on earlier school killings.
Photographs connected to the gunman who carried out the 2018 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were displayed on his bedroom wall.
Marcee Gray, the teenager’s mother, had also urged her estranged husband to secure the firearms and restrict their son’s access in the weeks before the attack, according to testimony. She has not been charged in connection with the shooting.
The jury concluded in March that Colin Gray’s failure to act amid those warning signs rose beyond poor judgement and amounted to criminal negligence.
Families Describe a Preventable Loss
Relatives of those killed asked the court to impose the maximum punishment, describing the consequences of a parent’s failure to control access to a deadly weapon.
Shayna Aspinwall, whose husband was killed at the school, criticised Gray for failing to meet the responsibilities of firearm ownership.
She said her own children had lost their father because he went to work as a teacher and tried to protect students during the attack.
“What if another student shot me at school? My kids would have no parents because we were both teachers that aspired to help students learn, not be on the front line,” she said.
Maria Schermerhorn, the mother of Mason Schermerhorn, rejected the suggestion that the pressures of raising a child alone explained Gray’s decisions.
“Parenting is hard. Parenting alone is even harder. I know that because I lived it … but there is a world of difference between struggling to parent and refusing to parent,” she said.
She said parents could not control every decision their children would eventually make, but remained responsible for the dangers they placed within their reach.
“Even as a young single mother, I understood something that Mr. Gray apparently did not … I could not control every choice my children would eventually make, but I was responsible for controlling what I put into their hands,” she added.
Gray showed little visible reaction as the families addressed the court.
Defence Says Father Never Intended Violence
Brian Hobbs, one of Gray’s lawyers, argued that the sentence should reflect that his client neither planned the attack nor intended for anyone to be harmed.
“That is not lenience,” Hobbs said while requesting a 10-year term. “Ten years in a Georgia prison for a man who never intended to harm a single human being is among the most severe sentences ever imposed on a parent in American history for the act of the child.”
The defence maintained that Gray did not fully understand the extent of his son’s fixation or recognise that the teenager intended to attack the school.
Hobbs also argued that Gray had attempted to connect with his son through outdoor activities and believed that spending time together would improve his emotional condition.
He said the prosecution’s requested sentence risked punishing the father as though he had carried out the shooting himself.
Gray’s lawyers intend to appeal the conviction.
Prosecutor Says Risk Was ‘Staring Him in the Face’
Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said the case was not built on the expectation that Gray should have predicted every detail of his son’s actions.
Instead, Smith argued that Gray knowingly disregarded a recognisable danger after the earlier threat investigation, the concerns raised by the teenager’s mother and the evidence visible inside his 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 the exact tool he would need to accomplish this,” Smith said.
“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 the rest of his life in prison.”
Smith told the court that the danger had been “staring him in the face every day.”
A Rare Prosecution of a Shooter’s Parent
Gray’s case is the first in Georgia in which a parent was convicted of second-degree murder in connection with a mass shooting committed by a child.
It is also part of a developing effort by American prosecutors to hold adults accountable when young people obtain firearms from their homes despite clear warning signs.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were each sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in Michigan after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2021 Oxford High School shooting carried out by their son.
The Georgia prosecution went further by securing second-degree murder convictions in the deaths of the two students.
Under state law, that charge applied because jurors found that the deaths resulted from cruelty to children.
Primm said Gray’s punishment could not undo the damage inflicted on the victims, their relatives and the wider school community.
His ruling nevertheless established that a parent who disregards grave warning signs and leaves a child with access to a firearm can face years in prison, even without participating directly in the violence that follows.
