A man who bought his son a gun that the teenager used to kill four people at his high school outside Atlanta was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison, marking the first time in Georgia that the parent of a school shooter has been sentenced in connection with such an attack.

Colin Gray was convicted of second-degree murder and other charges in March after buying his son Colt Gray an assault-style rifle as a Christmas gift. Prosecutors said Colin Gray knew or should have known it was not safe to arm his son, who they said had a history of mental health issues.

Colt Gray took the gun to Apalachee High School and fatally shot fellow 14-year-olds Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, on Sept. 4, 2024. Eight more students and another teacher were wounded.

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Colt Gray had asked a teacher if he could go to the front office and speak to someone on the day of the shooting.  

“The teacher allowed him to leave and take his belongings with him. Gray went to the restroom and hid from teachers. Later, he took out the rifle, and began shooting,” the agency said.

Colt Gray pleaded guilty to murder and other charges in March and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole earlier this month.

In his testimony, Colin Gray said the gift of a rifle was an attempt to bond with his son, whom he characterized as quiet and shy, by introducing him to hunting. He said he also bought him a guitar.

“A bigger piece for me was from getting him away from screen time and computers and Xboxes and things like that,” Gray said at the time.

His mother, Marcee, did not have custody and did not face charges due to her limited contact with her son, according to Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith.

Colt Gray admired other school shooters, including the one who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Prosecutors said his father knew about his son’s obsession with school shooters and more about the danger than he let on.

“It wasn’t like one parent missed one warning,” Smith told reporters in March. “This was multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time and, like we said, you just had to do one thing — take that rifle away — and this would have been prevented.”

Colin Gray is among a few parents sentenced after their children carried out a school shooting. In 2024, the first parents convicted in a U.S. school shooting were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison. Jennifer and James Crumbley’s teenage son killed four students in 2021 at Oxford High School in Michigan.

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