Father of Apalachee High School Shooter Convicted of 2nd-Degree Murder

When the shooting happened at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on September 4th, 2024, the story initially looked like yet another entry in America’s endless catalog of school shootings. Four people were murdered in less than a minute. The victims were 53-year-old teacher Cristina Irimie, 39-year-old coach Richard Aspinwall, and two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Nine others were wounded. The shooter was 14-year-old Colt Gray.

Authorities said the teenager brought an ‘AR-platform-style weapon’ to school in his backpack. The barrel stuck out and had been wrapped in poster board so it would look like part of a school project. Because nothing says “perfectly normal school day” like a rifle disguised as a science fair display. After arriving at school, Gray left class, retrieved the rifle from a bathroom, and opened fire in classrooms and hallways. The entire attack lasted roughly fifty-two seconds. In less than a minute an untrained teenager managed to kill four people and wound nine others. When confronted by school resource officers, Colt Gray surrendered without incident. It probably didn’t hurt that he’s white.

Like most school shootings, the Apalachee attack did not come out of nowhere. Colt Gray had already been on law enforcement’s radar the year before. In 2023, investigators interviewed him after a school shooting threat appeared online through a Discord account named “Lanza,” written with Cyrillic characters referencing the Sandy Hook shooter. The account posted photos of guns and talked about attacking schools while sharing antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Police and the FBI investigated but said there was not enough evidence for an arrest at the time. Apparently posting threats under the name of a mass murderer is not quite enough to raise alarms in a country with more guns than people.

Investigators later found a notebook outlining plans for the shooting along with drawings that mirrored the attack. Prosecutors also said Colt Gray maintained a shrine in his bedroom dedicated to past mass shooters, including Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz. The Columbine copycat pipeline has been operating for twenty-five years now, and yet every time one of these cases pops up, people still act like it came out of thin air. Despite those warning signs, the rifle used in the attack ended up in Colt Gray’s hands because his father bought it for him as a Christmas present. Some kids get socks. Some get video games. Colt Gray got a rifle designed for the battlefield.

Colin Gray, Colt’s father, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct, and multiple counts of cruelty to children. Prosecutors argued that Gray had received repeated warnings about his son’s deteriorating mental health and violent obsessions but still allowed him access to firearms. They said he did not simply forget to lock up a gun. He handed the kid the rifle himself.

The trial started last month and lasted about two weeks. Prosecutors called teachers, students, investigators, and members of the Gray family to testify about what led to the massacre. One of the most revealing witnesses was Colt Gray’s mother, Marcee Gray. She testified that she knew her son idolized Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz and had even sent Cruz money while he was in prison. Yes, you read that correctly. The kid was sending fan mail money to a mass murderer, and somehow the household firearms situation still remained unchanged.

Marcee Gray said she warned her estranged husband about their son’s obsession and urged him to secure the guns in the home. She did not ask him to get rid of them. She only asked him to lock them in his truck. Not a safe. Not removal from the house. Just put them in the truck. Because teenagers have never figured out how to get around a parental lock before. That has certainly never happened in the history of teenage decision making.

Her testimony also included some truly stellar examples of American mental health care. She admitted she had been cutting pieces off her own Zoloft prescription and giving them to Colt. That was the family’s treatment plan. She also testified that in the days before the shooting, the family had planned to take Colt to an inpatient mental health facility in Athens. Georgia, not Greece. According to her testimony, Colin Gray stopped answering her phone calls, and the trip never happened. Instead of taking his troubled son to a treatment center, Colin Gray took him to a guitar shop. I guess he wanted to set up his son with the sweet El Mariachi guitar case for his shooting.

Another key witness was Colt Gray’s younger sister. She told jurors that her father instructed her to lie to investigators during the early stages of the case. She also testified that she believed her brother was capable of committing a school shooting and believed her father knew it too. Prosecutors showed receipts proving Colin Gray bought the rifle in November 2023, months after deputies had already investigated the earlier school shooting threat. They also presented evidence that Gray searched online for gun safes but never actually bought one. Apparently typing “gun safe” into Google makes you a ‘responsible gun owner™’ now.

This past Tuesday, the jury reached a verdict after just one hour and forty-eight minutes of deliberation. Colin Gray was convicted on 27 charges, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter connected to the deaths of the four victims. He was also found guilty of reckless conduct and multiple counts of cruelty to children. Gray now faces the possibility of up to 180 years in prison when he is sentenced.

That conviction makes Colin Gray only the second ‘parent’ in the United States convicted for giving their child the weapon used in a school shooting. The first were Jennifer and James Crumbley in Michigan, whose son Ethan Crumbley killed four students at Oxford High School in 2021 after his parents bought him a handgun. Both parents were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to roughly ten to fifteen years in prison. There is also still the matter of Jeffrey Rupnow, who reportedly bought his daughter Natalie a gun for Christmas before the 2024 school shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. Apparently the holiday tradition of gifting firearms to unstable teenagers is still alive and well in some households. It’s what Christ would have wanted.

Some legal commentators are asking what Colin Gray’s conviction means for ‘parental liability.’ The answer is what it should have meant all along. If you have kids in your home, get rid of your fucking guns. If someone has enough money to stockpile an arsenal of rifles and ammunition, that person has enough money to pay for therapy sessions. The Apalachee victims were not killed because nobody saw the warning signs. They were killed because the warnings were ignored and someone decided a Christmas rifle was a better investment than getting the kid help.

Thanks to Lady Gray for the tip.

(Sources)