Father of Georgia school shooting suspect arrested on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges

The father of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old accused of killing four people at a Georgia high school and wounding nine others, was arrested this Thursday and faces several charges, including second-degree murder and manslaughter for allowing his son to possess a gun.

Colin Gray, 54, will now face four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to minors.

"His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon," Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey told a news conference.

The shooting, which sent shockwaves across the country, happened at Apalachee High School near Atlanta.

This is the most recent case where parents of minors who carried out mass shootings face liability for their children's actions.

For example, in April, Jennifer and James Crumbley of Michigan were the first parents to be convicted in a mass school shooting in the United States. Both were sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison for failing to secure a gun at home and not paying attention to signs of their son's deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021.

Both Colin and Colt Gray have already been charged in the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie, 39 and 53, respectively, Georgia authorities said.

The young shooter is scheduled to make an initial court appearance Friday. However, his father has not yet been scheduled for the proceeding.

Despite being a juvenile, authorities charged Colt Gray as an adult with four counts of murder for Wednesday's shootings. Authorities accuse Gray of using a military-style semiautomatic rifle during the attack.

The case has raised much criticism against law enforcement because the FBI had been targeting the suspect for a year.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Atlanta reported that it had been investigating Colt Gray since May 2023 for several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time.

The FBI detailed that the Jackson County Sheriff's Office at that time located a possible subject, a 13-year-old boy, and interviewed him and his father. These men were Colt and Colin Gray.

The father stated at the time that he had hunting guns in the house, but the juvenile did not have unsupervised access to them.

For his part, the juvenile said he was not the one who made the online threats.

According to The Associated Press, in Georgia, second-degree murder amounts to one person causing the death of another while "committing second-degree cruelty to children, regardless of intent." Punishment for this type of crime ranges from 10 to 30 years in prison.

Involuntary manslaughter, meanwhile, implies that someone caused the death of another person unintentionally. Likewise, murder with malice aforethought and first-degree murder carry a minimum sentence of life imprisonment.