Miami.- A U.S. judge sentenced the father of Colt Gray, the teenager who at 14 years old killed four people at his school in the state of Georgia, to fifteen years in prison this Thursday for second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
“It is evident that you failed as a father,” said Judge Nicholas Primm of the Barrow County Superior Court in his sentencing to the father, who one Christmas gifted his son the rifle with which he perpetrated the 2024 school shooting.
“She did not provide a stable home. She did not keep the problems or what the children were witnessing under control; she did not enroll Colt in the activities that a child should be in, where he could interact with other children in person, where he would feel loved, where he would feel accepted,” she added.
However, she clarified that none of these reasons were the cause of her conviction, but rather the fact that she did not see the warning lights “that were flashing brighter and brighter,” did not seek help for her son, and did not prevent his access to the weapons.
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Life imprisonment for Colt Gray for U.S. school shooting
Colt killed four people and wounded nine others at Apalachee High School, in the city of Winder, using an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
The massacre was planned during the months prior, according to the information contained in several of the minor’s notebooks, who felt a fascination for the perpetrators of some previous school shootings.
Colt was sentenced this Monday by the same judge to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
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Colin Gray was charged with 27 counts, including second-degree murder and cruelty to children.
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“A form of negligence”
Although the judge highlighted that none of those charges required mandatory pretrial detention, he noted that all of them were “a form of criminal negligence,” for which he sentenced him to fifteen years in prison.
Furthermore, he warned that Colin should have taken steps to prevent the murders, such as hiding the ammunition, locking the weapon in a safe, or giving it to someone else while his son needed help.
“But he didn’t. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here,” he stated.
This is the first case of a mass shooting in which the parent is convicted of murder.
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In 2024, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents convicted for similar acts following the shooting committed by their son Ethan at a Michigan school in 2021, where four students died. Both were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for failing to act on warning signs and allowing the minor access to the weapon used.
