Apalachee trial: Dad’s case is handed off to the jury
WINDER — Colin Gray’s fate is now up to 12 of his peers from neighboring Hall County, who are set to start deliberations in his case first thing Tuesday morning.
The trial is one of the first cases in the nation holding a parent accountable for allegedly enabling a child’s access to a firearm used in a school shooting. In the first of those cases to go to trial, the parents of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley were convicted and sentenced to at least 10 years.
The charges against Gray are related to his son, Colt Gray, allegedly opening fire inside Apalachee High School on Sept. 4, 2024, killing two students — Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn — and two teachers — Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall.
Colin Gray is facing 27 charges, including two counts of murder in the second degree, two counts of involuntary manslaughter and a number of charges of cruelty to children in the second degree and reckless conduct charges.
Assistant District Attorney Patricia Brooks told jurors during closing arguments Monday afternoon that Colin Gray’s inaction in the months leading up to the shooting contributed to the deadliest school shooting in state history.
Colin, she said, was the one person who could have prevented the shooting.
Instead, “he was the one man that ensured Colt Gray had the tools he needed to commit mass murder,” Brooks said. “The only person who knew what Colt was capable of was the defendant.”
Prosecutors allege that Colin gave Colt access to guns and ammunition despite a series of warnings about his son’s mental health and violent fantasies.
Gray bought his son a SIG Sauer M400 in November 2023, as part of a Christmas present, and regularly added to his son’s arsenal wish list, including buying him a tactical vest and laser sight for the gun, according to court records.
Brooks said Colin knew for years about his son’s deteriorating mental health and didn’t do anything about it. She called him a “narcissist” and a liar, who created a facade that he was a good father.
“After seeing sign after sign of his son deteriorating mental state, his violence, his school shooter obsession, the defendant had sufficient warning that his son was a bomb just waiting to go off,” Brooks told jurors. “Instead of disarming him, he gave him the detonator.”
Brooks repeated the victims’ names on multiple occasions during her closings. Similar to a tactic deployed by District Attorney Brad Smith during openings, Brooks focused on the evidence of tumult at the Gray home, including issues related to Colt’s mother’s drug addiction and arrests, several moves and the boy’s parents splitting up and reuniting. Through all of that, Brooks said, the gun remained in Colt’s room.
Brooks said Colin knew about the shrine Colt had in his room of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz, something defense attorneys have denied.
“Teenagers have athletes on their wall, they have movie stars, they have musicians, they don’t have mass murderers of children tacked all over their wall,” Brooks said. “Colt was glorifying a mass murderer of children for months and the defendant left the rifle in his room.”
Colin Gray’s attorney Jim Berry told jurors that the person who should be held responsible for the shooting is the alleged shooter, Colt Gray.
“He made a conscious decision to do this, a secretive decision,” Berry said.
Berry also said some of the blame should go to school officials, who missed spotting Colt’s gun poking out of his backpack as he toted it around school for most of the morning of the shooting.
And Berry argued that Marcee Gray, the teen’s mother, knew about the school shooter obsession and didn’t do anything to stop it or tell Colin about it. Marcee testified earlier in the case that she begged her estranged husband to take away the guns while the family dealt with Colt’s mental health issues.
“He didn’t know what was coming because he didn’t have sufficient warning,” Berry said of his client. “He never, in a million years, thought that this son that he loved was going to turn out to be the monster that killed these people.”
Colt Gray’s plea hearing has been on hold while his dad’s trial proceeds.
The families of the Apalachee victims announced last year in a series of court filings their intention to file lawsuits against Jackson County and its sheriff’s office, Barrow County and its sheriff’s office and Barrow County school authorities for failing to react to multiple warnings that a student was planning a shooting at the school.
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