Guilty verdict for US father of teenage school shooter

The father of a teenage boy accused of killing four people in a shooting rampage at a high school in the US state of Georgia has been found guilty of murder, child cruelty and other charges.

Colin Gray, 55, pleaded not guilty to all 29 charges against him stemming from the 2024 attack that left two teachers and two students dead in Winder, Georgia.

His prosecution marks the third time that a US parent has been held criminally responsible for a mass shooting carried out by their child, according to CBS News, the BBC's US partner.

Prosecutors argued Gray was "the one person who could have prevented" the shooting by his 14-year-old son, because he knew he "was a bomb just waiting to go off".

The attack at Apalachee High School outside the city of Atlanta claimed the lives of Christian Angulo, 14, Mason Schermerhorn, 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.

His son, Colt Gray, is currently awaiting trial for the shooting.

During the trial, the jury heard how Colin Gray had bought his son an AR-style rifle for Christmas the year before the attack, even though the boy had been questioned by police just seven months earlier about online threats to commit a school shooting.

Prosecutors argued he ignored numerous warning signs, including a notebook detailing how his son planned to kill students and teachers.

"After seeing sign after sign of his son's 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," Barrow County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Brooks told jurors.

"And instead of disarming him, he gave him the detonator."

His lawyers attempted to shift blame to his son.

"This is the person who went into the high school and shot and killed four people he didn't even know and injured scores of others," his lawyer, Jimmy Barry, told jurors, referring to the boy.

"This is the person who needs to be punished. He made a conscious decision to do this - a secretive decision."

The jury deliberated for only about two hours, after the two-week trial. During the trial, Colin Gray took the stand to testify that he did not know his son would commit an attack.

Prosecutors outlined how the shooting allegedly occurred, describing how the boy carried the rifle on the school bus and how one of the young victims saved the lives of other pupils.

"Christian [Angulo] acted, and became a hero," prosecutor Patricia Brooks said.

"He attempted to push the shooter out of his classroom, and when he was shot, Christian's last act on this earth was to shut the door to his classroom to protect his friends."

According to US media in the courtroom, Colin Gray did not visibly react to hearing the verdict.

He now faces at least 30 years in prison. His sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled.

Prior to the shooting, authorities had interviewed Colin Gray and his son after federal law enforcement received a tip.

The FBI said its National Threat Operations Center had alerted local police in May 2023 after receiving anonymous tips about "online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time".

The agency said that within 24 hours, investigators had determined that the threats originated in Georgia.

Sheriff's deputies interviewed the boy and his father, who "stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them", the FBI said.

The suspect, who was 13 years old at the time, denied making the online threats and officials "alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject".

"At the time, there was no probable cause for an arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state or federal levels," added the FBI statement.

Charges against the parents of a suspect in a school shooting are relatively new in the US, with at least two other cases being brought to trial recently.

In April 2024, the parents of a Michigan teenager who killed four students with a gun they had bought for him just days before the shooting were sentenced for their role in the attack.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

The case was widely reported to be the first time the parents of a child who had carried out a mass shooting in the US were held criminally liable.