The father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray was in court today to face criminal charges for his son’s mass shooting in Georgia, a development that appears to be a growing trend of authorities holding culpable parents responsible for such incidents.
Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with 4 counts of involuntary manslaughter, 2 counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey did not go into detail about the charges but the father was expected to appear in court soon.
“The charges are directly connected to the actions of his son and allowing him to access a weapon, said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey of Colin Gray.
Media reports have emerged that Colt Gray was having difficulties with his home life and that he was also being picked on in school. Authorities have said the Georgia Department of Human Services had contacts with the family, but no further details have been provided. Colt Gray was living with his father and his two siblings were with his mother.
Acting on a tip from the FBI, Jackson County deputies also interviewed Colt and Colin Gray last year while investigating online threats made on Discord about threatening to shoot up a school. The father admitted to having weapons in the home but said they were not loaded and Colt did not have unlimited access to them. No charges were recommended afterwards.
Fox 5 News in Atlanta reported that the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office alerted Jackson County Public Schools to “keep monitoring Colt Gray,” but it’s unclear what monitoring meant or if the message was relayed to Barrow County Public Schools when Colt and Colin Gray moved to Barrow County.
There appears to be growing sentiment by law enforcement and the legal system that parents can and should be held legally responsible when their children commit school shootings, citing causes such as irresponsible gun access in the home, ignoring a child’s mental health issues and the like.
Jennifer and James Crumbley are the first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting. They were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year after prosecutors presented evidence of an unsecured gun at home and indifference toward the teen’s mental health.
The parents of a Michigan school shooter were each sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to take steps that could have prevented the killing of four students in 2021.
first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a school attack.
Prosecutors say Jennifer Crumbley had a duty under Michigan state law to prevent her son, who was 15 at the time, from harming others. She was accused of failing to secure a gun and ammunition at home and failing to get help for Ethan Crumbley’s mental health.
On the morning of Nov. 30, 2021, school staff members were concerned about a violent drawing of a gun, bullet and wounded man, accompanied by desperate phrases, on Ethan Crumbley’s math assignment. His parents were called to the school for a meeting with school staff, but they didn’t take the boy home.
A few hours later, Ethan Crumbley pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot 10 students and a teacher. No one had checked the backpack. The gun was the Sig Sauer 9 mm his father, James Crumbley, purchased with him just four days earlier. Jennifer Crumbley had taken her son to a shooting range that same weekend.
Just a few weeks ago, the parents of accused Santa Fe High School gunman Dimitrios Pagourtzis -- Rose Maria Kosmetatos and Antonios Pagourtzis – were found not guilty in a civil trial filed by seven of the 10 people killed in a 2018 shooting. The jury found the shooter 80 percent liable for the outcome and an online ammo store 20 percent.
The jury found Pagourtzis’ parents, Rose Maria Kosmetatos and Antonios Pagourtzis, not liable but did find their son, Dimitrios Pagourtzis liable for the shooting. The jury’s verdict assigned 80 percent responsibility to Dimitrios Pagourtzis and 20 percent to an online ammo store.
Seven of the 10 people killed during the 2018 mass shooting, and four of the survivors, sued the Pagourtzis, their son, and Luckygunner. The families argued they turned a blind eye to their son’s declining mental health and were reckless in how they stored guns in the home; citing it was the father’s 12-gauge shotgun and mother’s .38-caliber handgun used in the mass shooting.
What Can be Proved
Gun laws in Georgia, as measured by organizations such as Giffords Law Center and Everytown for Gun Safety, are considered to be fairly relaxed, so it may be difficult to tell how prosecutors will prove Colin Gray broke the law.
Among other things, gun owners in Georgia are not legally required to lock up or otherwise securely store firearms away from children. Colt Gray is 14 and could not legally own or purchase a gun.
Tim Pastore, a Partner in the New York office of Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads and legal expert for Security Business magazine, said the Apalachee High School shooting was “another sad case rooted in our failure as a society to keep firearms out of the hands of those known to be a risk to themselves or others.
“Here, as with the tragic Crumbley case in Michigan, a parent may be held responsible for the intentional acts of their child.”
Pastore said initial reports indicate that Gray previously made threats against the school and himself and, notwithstanding those threats and his father’s knowledge of those threats, the father nevertheless purchased the weapon and gifted it to his son.
“The message of this, and the Crumbley case before it, is that parents can be held criminally responsible for the intentional acts of their child – particularly where the parent knew or should have known that the child was a danger to him/herself and to others,” Pastore told SecurityInfoWatch.com. “Buying the child a weapon, as this father allegedly did, shows a callous disregard for the consequences – and warrants these criminal charges.
“More than any other industrialized nation,” he continued, “America is failing to protect children and other victims from gun violence – largely because, as in this case, guns are in such ample supply and so easy to access. While this case may involve mental illness, every country has a segment of their population suffering from mental illness. The difference is the availability of guns – which, in America, is flagrantly disproportionate than in all other industrialized countries.”
Many security experts and advocates have been pushing for the adoption of Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), also known as a Red Flag order
any schools follow best practices on prevention and intervention supports for students, reasonable security measures, and emergency planning, “and we are still experiencing school shootings,” said Dr. Kenneth Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services.
“School safety is a ‘wicked problem’ to solve with no simple stopping point, where if you do these five things you won't have school shootings. Parents, students, educators, the media, and society as a whole are fed up with school shootings.
“There is an increasing demand by parents and the media for ‘accountability’ which means more pressure to identify specific individuals, whether they be educators, first responders, and/or parents, who may have dropped the ball at any point on the continuum of prevention to response.”
