Georgia officials charged the father of the suspected Apalachee High gunman with two counts of second-degree murder Thursday — the most severe charges ever filed against the parent of an alleged school shooter. The arrest came less than 36 hours after two students and a pair of teachers were gunned down with an AR-15-style rifle that, investigators allege, the man allowed his 14-year-old son to possess.
Along with murder, Colin Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children. His son, Colt Gray, has been charged with four felony counts of murder.
The father “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon. His charges are directly connected to the actions of his son,” Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said at an evening news conference. He provided no other details on what led to the charging decision — or its remarkable speed.
There were warning signs before Wednesday’s attack, according to law enforcement officials and family members.
A year ago, local investigators interviewed Gray and his son about alleged online threats the teen had made to shoot up a school, accusations that Colt Gray denied at the time. This week, the boy’s aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post that the teen had been “begging” the adults around him for mental health support in recent months.
Before Thursday’s announcement, the teen’s grandfather, Charles Polhamus, said he wanted Colin Gray charged along with his son.
“If he didn’t have a damn gun,” Polhamus said, “he wouldn’t have gone and killed anybody.”
Though Colin Gray is in custody, his case had not been added to the online county court system by late Thursday evening, so it remains unclear who will represent him.
The charges come five months after a mother and father in Michigan became the first parents of a school shooter sentenced for involuntary manslaughter, a less severe crime than second-degree murder. Investigators found that, in November 2021, James and Jennifer Crumbley had bought their 15-year-old son a gun, didn’t lock it up and ignored blatant warning signs before he opened fire at Oxford High in Michigan, killing four students. In separate trials, each was found guilty and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison, the maximum allowed.
“The set of facts seems so similar, and it’s so incredibly difficult to see it repeated,” said Karen McDonald, the Oakland County prosecutor who led the Michigan case. “My sincerest hope was that there would never be a need to charge parents in another school shooting. Securing a firearm takes less than 10 seconds. It would have been so easy to save the lives of four people.”
