Less than an hour after his 14-year-old son appeared in a Georgia courtroom on murder charges on Friday, Colin Gray found himself in the same courtroom seat.
He anxiously rocked back and forth as prosecutors accused him of bearing responsibility for the deaths caused by the boy’s rampage.
The initial appearances by Colin Gray, 54, and Colt Gray, 14, in the Barrow County courtroom came two days after an attack that killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, a city of 18,000 some 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Atlanta. Nine others were wounded.
Colt Gray, an Apalachee student, has been charged as an adult with four counts of murder.
Prosecutors have also charged the father, who faces up to 180 years in prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. They allege he provided the weapon to his son.
In bringing charges against the father of the accused shooter, prosecutors are implementing an emerging legal approach as the United States grapples with mass gun violence in schools. It is steadily winning support from some survivor groups and state authorities, but critics say the tactic risks prosecutorial overreach and may do little to deter shootings.
Studies by the US Department of Homeland Security have shown that around 75% of all school shooters obtained their weapons at home. Experts say that parents securing those weapons so that teenagers are denied access to them would help prevent school shootings.
The Gray case comes on the heels of the April sentencing of the mother and father of a high school shooter in Michigan, believed to be the first time in the United States that parents were held legally responsible for their children’s action in a school shooting.
In that instance, Jennifer and James Crumbley, parents of Ethan Crumbley, who in 2021 shot and killed four classmates at Oxford High School, were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison after being convicted for manslaughter. The jury found them guilty of not securing guns in their home and of ignoring warning signs that their son was mentally disturbed.
Karen McDonald, the Michigan prosecutor who put the Crumbley parents on trial, said she hopes high-profile cases like that against Colin Gray in Georgia serve as a wake-up call to gun owners that they need to secure their weapons in the home.
McDonald does not consider her prosecution of the Crumbleys or the charges against Colin Gray to necessarily be about creating a new type of deterrence for gun-owning parents, nor does she think parents of school shooters should always be held responsible for the acts of their children.
