Apalachee High School Shooting: Colin Gray, father of alleged shooter, charged

BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — In a rare move, the parent of an accused school gunman is being charged in connection to a shooting.

Colin Gray, 54, father of Apalachee High School accused shooter Colt Gray, was charged on Thursday with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, WSB reported.

Four people were killed in Wednesday’s shooting — two students: Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and two teachers: Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie.

Nine others were wounded.

On Thursday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said, “His (Colin Gray’s) charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon, The Associated Press reported.

Colin Gray told officials that he bought the AR-style gun used in this week’s shooting for his son as a Christmas present in December, CNN reported. The gun was purchased after the father and son had spoken to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department earlier that same year.

Colin Gray was interviewed along with his son in May 2023 after the FBI was tipped off about posts made on Discord. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department interviewed the pair who said that they owned hunting rifles telling the authorities that Colt Gray did not have access to them.

When questioned about the Discord account, Colt Gray told investigators that he had deleted his account before he and his father had moved to their new home. The Discord account that concerned other users was made after Gray said his account was deleted, officials said.

It also had several IP addresses from Georgia, New York and Virginia while having a user name “written in Russian. Translation of the Russian letters spells out the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lansa, who is the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter in Newton, Conn.” the incident report said.

Colin Gray said his son did not have the email address listed on the account and did not know or speak Russian. Colt Gray told investigators that “he stopped using Discord because too many people kept hacking his account and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes.”

“Colt expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” the Jackson County sheriff’s incident report said, according to WSB.

Colin Gray also told investigators at the time that his son was struggling with his parents’ separation and was picked on at school. The elder Gray also said the pair would go hunting together and that his son frequently fired guns.

“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” Colin Gray told the authorities, the AP reported.

Officials did alert local schools, The New York Times reported. Deputies told his father to keep Colt Gray out of school until it was “resolved,” WSB reported.

This is not the first time a parent has been charged in connection to a school shooting that was carried out by their child. Jennifer and James Crumbly, whose son Ethan Crumbly killed four students at his Michigan school in 2021, were convicted in April. They were both convicted of involuntary manslaughter for not securing a firearm at home and for acting indifferently to their son’s declining mental health before the shooting, the AP reported.

Ethan Crumbly pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism, the AP reported.

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