Georgia father faces historic charges after deadly school shooting by son, marking a shift in accountability
An unprecedented shift in the continuing gun violence crisis in America. The father of suspected school shooter, 14-year-old Colt Gray, was charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children by Georgia officials. These charges are the most severe to ever come against a parent of an alleged school shooter.
What happened in Winder, GA
On September 4, Gray, a student at Apalachee High School, opened fire with an AR-style platform rifle and killed four individuals, injuring nine others. According to The Washington Post, the victims were identified as 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53. All of the injured are expected to make a full recovery.
Gray was arrested and detained after a brief confrontation on the scene, with officials stating he will be charged with murder and tried as an adult. The shooting is now the deadliest school shooting of the year, and the first fatal school shooting in Georgia since 1999, according to a database byThe Post.
As violence in schools continues, parental responsibility changes
School shootings have become hauntingly routine in America. There have been 417 school shootings since the Columbine shooting of 1999, according to The Post’s database.
Out of these 417 shootings, at least 213 children, educators and other people have been killed, and 472 have been injured.
Although violence in schools continues, the response by the justice system is slowly shifting. In April, the first parents of a school shooter were convicted and sentenced to at least 10 years, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Jennifer and James Crumbley were accused of not taking the necessary precautions to stop their son, Ethan Crumbley, from opening fire at Oxford High School in 2021. The shooting killed four students. The parents were convicted of involuntary manslaughter by a Michigan judge.
The Oxford shooting and the recent Apalachee shooting bear eerie similarities, but specifically the role the parent’s played. For the Crumbley’s, the crux of the case against them was that they knowingly allowed their son to possess a weapon, despite repeated mental health issues and violence. Gray’s father, Colin Gray, was arrested less than 36 hours after the Apalachee shooting. Investigators allege that his father knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon, despite previous warnings.
In May 2023, the father and son were interviewed by local investigators about alleged online threats the teen had made to commit a school shooting. At the time, the pair both vehemently denied these accusations, according to The Post. The suspect’s father claimed that he did have hunting weapons in the house, but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them. CBS News reported that investigators are looking into whether the weapon used in the shooting was a Christmas gift from his father in December of 2023.
A cultural shift: is it enough?
The upgrade in charges made against Gray’s father for the role he played in the violence reflect society's escalating anger against the gun violence epidemic. The emergence of punishing parents for their children’s crimes mirrors widespread frustration over gun violence. The argument against Colin Gray is not that he wanted the shooting to happen, but rather his negligence and failure to intervene directly linked him to the crime. In a state such as Georgia with relatively loose gun laws, prosecutors may be more inclined to bring a sense of justice to the case, since regulations could not prevent the violence.
Despite the increase in penalization of parents, mental health resources and gun restrictions still fall short. When there is a very deep social problem in America, the common response is within criminal justice, instead of addressing the root issue. Several students at Apalachee High School that witnessed the shooting haven taken to social media to speak out and tell their stories.
“I am angry because babies lost their lives. My classmates lost their lives. My teachers lost their lives. I’m just angry and there needs to be some justice because it’s just not normal what happened,” said Lillian Forhana, a student at Apalachee High School, in a TikTok.
By Mikayla Melo
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