Georgia takes unusual step to arrest father of teenager suspected of involvement in school shooting

Colin Gray, 54, father of 14-year-old suspected Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray, poses for police photo call in this undated handout photo released Sept. 5, 2024; Source: Barrow County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Georgia state officials on Thursday arrested the father of the 14-year-old suspected of involvement in a school shooting that killed four people and injured nine others on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. The father said he knowingly gave his son the murder weapon.

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, 54-year-old Colin Gray was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of intentional homicide and eight counts of child abuse.

“These charges are based on Mr. Gray knowingly allowing his son Colt to possess a firearm”Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said at a press conference.

Colt Gray, 14, is charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult, officials said. His arraignment is scheduled for Friday morning before a Georgia Supreme Court judge in Barrow County via video camera.

Georgia state and Barrow County investigators say the younger Gray used an “AR platform-style weapon,” a semi-automatic rifle, in the attack that killed two teachers and two 14-year-old students.

How exactly the son came into possession of the weapon remained unclear.

Investigators have not yet commented on the possible motives for the first mass shooting on a US campus since the start of the new school year.

The shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, a town of 18,000 about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, sparked both the national debate about gun control and the subsequent wave of grief in a country where such attacks occur with some regularity.

Officials identified those killed as two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.

Two teachers and seven students were injured in the attack, some of whom have already been released from the hospital, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told reporters.

“I am very happy that the nine injured people will make a full recovery.,” Smith told reporters.

Parents held accountable

The indictment of the father could represent a new strategy in America’s hesitant effort to control the epidemic of school shootings.

In April 2024, the mother and father of a Michigan teenager were sentenced to ten to fifteen years in prison after a jury found them guilty of manslaughter after their son shot and killed four classmates. It was believed to be the first time parents were held legally responsible for their children’s actions in a school shooting.

Experts and advocates for safer gun use said the Michigan case is an important step toward holding gun-owning parents more accountable for school violence committed by their children.

In Georgia, both Colts were questioned by officials in a neighboring county in May 2023 in connection with online threats about carrying out a school shooting that had been made on the gaming social media platform Discord, investigators said.

The Grays told the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department that they did not make the threats. The father also said that he locked hunting weapons in a safe in the house and his son did not have access to them.

Jackson County investigators closed the case after failing to prove Gray was connected to the Discord account or seeking the necessary court order to seize the family’s guns, according to police reports released Thursday by the sheriff’s office.

“This case was processed, and at the time the boy was thirteen, and there was not enough to prove“Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said in an interview. “When we receive a court order or charge someone, we take firearms with us for safekeeping.”

In the Michigan case, Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of Ethan Crumbley, who shot and killed four classmates at Oxford High School in 2021, were found guilty of failing to secure guns in their home and ignoring warning signs that their son was mentally disturbed.

Studies by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have shown that around 75 percent of all school shooters obtained their weapons at home.

The shooting was the first planned attack on a school this fall, said David Riedman, who maintains the K-12 school shooting database. Apalachee students returned to school last month; many other students across the United States are returning this week.

Hundreds of school and college shootings have occurred in the United States over the past two decades, and the carnage has heightened the debate over gun laws and the right enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Owning and carrying weapons“.