Colin Gray sentenced to 15 years for giving son rifle used in Apalachee High School shooting

The sentencing

Colin Gray, 55, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Thursday by Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm, two days after his son Colt received life without parole for the same attack. The sentence fell between the defense's request for 10 years in prison plus 10 years of probation and the prosecution's demand for 80 years; the potential range was from probation to 243 years. Judge Primm noted that none of the charges carried mandatory prison time, but said Gray's negligence had caused "immeasurable heartache." He described Gray as "tethered" to his son's crimes and said the warning signs had been "flashing brighter and brighter," yet Gray failed to get help or remove access to firearms. "It became more and more obvious that something bad was going to happen," the judge said, adding that if Gray had acted differently, "you wouldn't be here today."

“The loss here is profound. But I still have to distinguish your acts from the malignant heart and the acts that Colt Gray committed.”

The conviction

In March 2026, a jury found Colin Gray guilty of second-degree murder for the deaths of 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Georgia law defines second-degree murder in this context as causing the death of a child through cruelty to children. He was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the killings of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, along with multiple counts of reckless conduct and cruelty to children. Prosecutors argued that Gray gave his son the AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas gift in 2023, along with ammunition, a gun sight, and other accessories, and ignored his son's deteriorating mental health and growing obsession with violence. During his trial, Gray testified that he was ill-equipped to handle his son's behavioral problems and portrayed the gift as a misguided attempt to connect with him and pull him away from the internet and video games.

The attack

On September 4, 2024, Colt Gray, then 14, opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta. He killed two students and two teachers, and wounded another teacher and eight students, seven of them by gunfire. Colt Gray pleaded guilty to 55 charges and was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Judge Primm, who also presided over that sentencing, said the teenager "understood the horror of what you were going to do" but acknowledged that Colt Gray had been failed by the adults in his life, his father chief among them.

Victim impact

Family members of the victims delivered emotional statements before the sentencing. Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son Mason was killed, said the tragedy was preventable and that the choices made in the Gray household handed four families "life sentences of grief." Shayna Aspinwall, wife of teacher Richard Aspinwall, said Colin Gray "did not pull the trigger but purchased and left a firearm accessible to a minor," and stressed that the sentence must acknowledge the families' lifelong grief and trauma.

“This wasn't unavoidable. This was preventable. Because of the choices made inside the Gray household, four families were handed life sentences of grief.”

A growing legal strategy

Colin Gray's case is among a handful of U.S. prosecutions targeting parents for their children's mass shootings. Months before the Apalachee attack, Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison in Michigan after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to secure guns and ignoring their son's mental health warnings. Defense attorney Hobbs argued that the Crumbleys had more advance notice and asked the court not to make Georgia "the national outlier" with a harsher sentence. But District Attorney Brad Smith countered by showing a replica of Colt Gray's bedroom wall, which featured a shrine to the gunman behind the 2018 Parkland school shooting, and said the risk was "staring him in the face every day." Colin Gray is the first parent in Georgia to be charged for a child's mass shooting, and according to Le Figaro, possibly the first parent in the U.S. convicted of murder for a shooting carried out by their child.