With father of suspect charged in Georgia shooting, will more parents be held responsible?
Murder charges filed against father of 14-year-old boy accused a school shooting in Georgia follows the successful prosecution of two parents in Michigan who were held responsible for a similar tragedy at a school north of Detroit.
Is it a sign of a crackdown on parents accused of gross negligence when it comes to children and guns? Could public outrage also lead to more prosecutions or changes in laws in other states?
“It’s about looking at the relationship between what the child says and does and what the parent knows about what the child says and does,” said David Shapiro, a former prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Colin Gray, 54, has been accused with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder in connection with the deaths of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. Nine others were injured.
Gray’s son, Colt Gray, is charged with murder. Investigators said he used a “semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” in the attack.
The charges against Colin Gray “are directly related to his son’s actions and allowing him to possess a gun,” said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
James and Jennifer Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year for the 2021 deaths of four students at Oxford High School, the first time parents have been held criminally responsible for a mass shooting at a U.S. school. They are serving 10-year prison sentences while appeals are pending.
The Crumbleys didn’t know what son Ethan Crumbley was planning. But prosecutor Karen McDonald said their son’s actions were foreseeable. They were called in to discuss the 15-year-old’s macabre drawings of a gun and blood for a math assignment and a message: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. My life is pointless.”
The Crumbleys refused to take him home, but said they would seek therapy. That same day, Ethan Crumbley pulled a gun from his backpack and began shooting, using a weapon James Crumbley had bought as a gift a few days earlier. No one—parents or school staff—had checked the backpack.
The ‘acts and omissions of the parents were inextricably intertwined’ with what their son eventually did at Oxford, The Michigan Court of Appeals said in 2023 when the groundbreaking case was allowed to move forward.
District Attorney Brad Smith declined to release details that led him to charge Colin Gray in the Apalachee shooting. But in arrest warrants, authorities said he gave his son a gun “with the knowledge that he was a threat to himself and others.”
Smith acknowledged the Michigan case during a news conference on Friday, saying his case was a first for Georgia.
“I’m not trying to send a message,” he said. “I’m just trying to use the tools in my arsenal to prosecute people for the crimes they commit.”
Colin Gray was interviewed last year when authorities were investigating his son over a threatening social media post. The father said the teen “understands the seriousness of guns and what they can do and how to use them and not use them,” according to a transcript. No further action was taken.
McDonald, the Michigan district attorney, said the Georgia shooting and the father’s arrest were a “real slap in the face.”
“I can’t believe that the facts that were so harrowing in our case are so similar,” she told The Associated Press.
McDonald said states have laws that have consequences for gross negligence in different situations. She said it was encouraging that Georgia police immediately investigated how the gun was obtained.
“I never felt like this was a moment that would open the floodgates for charges against parents or send a message to people,” McDonald said of the Crumbley case. “Most people don’t need that message. It’s heartbreaking to watch it unfold.”
She explained that it only takes a few seconds to put a lock on a gun, and she demonstrated this to the jury.
Shapiro, the former New Jersey district attorney, said all states likely have laws that can hold parents liable, but much depends on the facts and the prosecutor’s opinion.
“You don’t want parents to miss these kinds of signals that something is seriously wrong or there is a significant risk,” he said.
Michigan has a new law this year that requires adults to keep their guns locked up when minors are present. In Newaygo County, a grandfather pleaded no defense in August in the death of a 5-year-old grandson. Another boy had picked up a loaded shotgun and fired it.
“If people would just put their guns away, we wouldn’t be putting parents behind bars for this reason,” said Kris Brown, president of Brady, a gun violence prevention group. “And we wouldn’t have to dig so many graves.”
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AP reporters Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this story.
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