(CNN) — Days after teenage school shooter Colt Gray was sentenced to life in prison, his father is set to appear in the same courtroom for his own sentencing in a landmark case that pushes the limits of who is responsible for a mass shooting.
Colin Gray, whose son killed four people at Apalachee High School in 2024, was convicted of murder and manslaughter earlier this year after buying his son an AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas gift and leaving it unsecured – despite warnings his son was a danger to others.
His trial was part of a broader push to hold accountable the parents of juvenile mass shooters. He is the first parent of a school shooter to be convicted of murder.
His sentencing Thursday is part of an emotionally fraught week for the community. Colt pleaded guilty to murder last Friday and was sentenced to life in prison without parole Tuesday. Meanwhile, Apalachee High School’s first day of class is this Friday.
Colin Gray’s sentencing represents the end of a harrowing road that began with the September 2024 shooting in which his son, then 14, fatally shot two students and two teachers and injured nine others at his Winder, Georgia, high school.
The hearing in Barrow County court is expected to begin with victims’ families and survivors, many of whom spoke powerfully at Colt’s sentencing. Prosecutors and defense attorneys will then have the chance to debate the length of Colin Gray’s prison sentence. He will also have a chance to speak before the judge issues a sentence.
The two second-degree murder charges are each punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison. Under Georgia law, a judge can decide whether a defendant serves that sentence in prison or on probation, so Colin Gray could be released Thursday.
He has already served just under two years since his arrest a day after the shooting.
Colt Gray, now 16, pleaded guilty to 55 felony counts, including four counts of malice murder, on Friday. His three-day sentencing hearing featured emotional victim impact statements, tapes of his confessions to police and insights into his twisted desire for infamy and obsession with school shooters.
The teen declined to speak to the court. He was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
This case bore close similarities to the trials of James and Jennifer Crumbley, whose then-15-year-old son killed four students in 2021 at his high school in Oxford, Michigan. The Crumbley parents were each convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison. Their son was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
What happened at the father’s trial
In a two-week trial in February and March, Barrow County prosecutors argued the boy’s father acted with “criminal negligence” and was a proximate cause of the shooting. His defense team, meanwhile, argued he was unaware of his son’s violent plans and had taken steps to get him help for his mental health troubles.
The state’s case included emotional testimony from students and teachers, police interviews with Colin Gray, photos showing unsecured firearms and ammunition in a bedroom closet, and testimony from the teen’s mother, grandmother and sister about Colt’s spiraling mental health.
Marcee Gray, the defendant’s estranged wife, testified their son was riddled with anxiety, easily agitated and had panic attacks. She said it was “very obvious” he needed professional help, but her husband “just didn’t want to deal with it.”
Notably, the jury saw body-camera footage from May 21, 2023, when deputies with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office visited Colt and Colin Gray’s home after receiving an FBI tip about an online threat to shoot up a school. Colt denied posting the threat, and law enforcement was ultimately not able to substantiate the tip.
Colin Gray bought his son the AR-15-style rifle later that year as a Christmas gift.
The defense called just one witness: Colin Gray himself. He testified he bought his son the firearm and ammunition in an attempt to get him interested in the outdoors and for father-son bonding. He said he had scheduled counseling at school for Colt’s mental health issues and did not ever perceive his son as a threat.
“He’s a good kid,” the father said through tears. “He wasn’t perfect, nor was I, but to do something that heinous, I don’t know that anybody can see that kind of evil. The Colt I knew, the relationship I had, there was this whole other side of Colt I didn’t know existed.”
Yet in a tense cross-examination, he acknowledged multiple firearms were stored in a closet, unsecured and unlocked, and he said Colt sometimes kept the rifle in his bedroom. He struggled to explain why Colt did not attend school his entire eighth-grade year, per school records. Colt attended Apalachee High School for only a few days before the attack.
Further, Colin Gray admitted he was aware that his son had been physically violent, had a photo of a school shooter on his bedroom wall and had texted a few weeks before the attack, “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands.”
The jury deliberated for less than two hours and convicted him of all 27 charges: Two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, 18 counts of cruelty to children and five counts of reckless conduct.
Marcee Gray, the teen’s mother, was not charged in the case. She had lost custody of Colt because of her struggles with drugs and alcohol and did not possess the firearms, Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said.
“We found what she did to be morally reprehensible. We do not believe she is a good mother, in my opinion,” he said. “But at the end of the day, she did not have custody of Colt, she did not have proximity to Colt, and she was not the one that provided him the firearms.”
Colin Gray’s trial also revealed the shooting was nearly prevented. The morning of the shooting, school officials and resource officers went to intercept Colt Gray after he had made several concerning comments. But in a stranger-than-fiction mix-up, they confused him with another student named Kolton Gray.
Colt Gray then armed himself with the AR-15-style rifle – which he had hidden in his backpack – and fired indiscriminately into a math class and shot several people in the hallway.
Teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were killed.
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