'The Warning Lights Were Flashing': Colin Gray Sentenced to 15 Years for the Rifle He Gave His Son

A Georgia judge sentenced Colin Gray to 15 years in prison Thursday for giving his son the rifle used in the Apalachee High School shooting, closing one of the most closely watched attempts in the country to hold a parent criminally responsible for a child's mass shooting.

Judge Nicholas Primm imposed the term after ordering most of Gray's sentences on the various counts to run concurrently, meaning they overlap rather than stack. Prosecutors had asked for 80 years. Defense attorneys had asked for a 20-year sentence with 10 years to serve. "It is clear you failed as a parent," Primm told him. "You didn't get him mental health counseling when it was obvious he needed some. None of those failures helped your case, but those aren't why you were convicted. You were convicted because the warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter and you didn't get him help."

Gray entered the Barrow County courtroom shortly after 9 a.m. in an orange-and-white striped detention center uniform. The hearing came two days after his son, 16-year-old Colt Gray, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to 55 charges, including murder, in the shooting that killed two students and two teachers. In March, a jury convicted Colin Gray on 27 charges, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children, after prosecutors argued he supplied the rifle despite repeated warnings about his son's deteriorating mental health.

The hearing opened with victims' families. Shayna Aspinwall, the wife of teacher and football coach Richard "Ricky" Aspinwall, told the court that "to the world, Ricky was a math teacher and a football coach. To the players he coached, he was a mentor. To me, he was my best friend, my partner and the person I expected to grow old with." She said she now lives with post-traumatic stress disorder and can no longer teach because of her fear of another school shooting. Turning to Gray, she said, "He was a single parent by choice. I am now because of his decisions. Colin couldn't take his kid to therapy. Now I have to take mine."

Richard Aspinwall's stepfather, Rick Aspinwall, told Gray, "Through your ineptitude and lack of situational awareness, you are responsible for all that's happened. I hope to God that you sit and remember everything that you're responsible for." Breanna Schermerhorn, the mother of 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn, rejected the word most often used for the shooting. "People keep calling us a tragedy. But tragedies are unavoidable. This was preventable," she said, adding that parenting "requires responsibility, sacrifice and showing up even when it's hard." Mason's older sister, Alana Schermerhorn, asked for the maximum sentence "not out of revenge, but because the consequences of these failures were irreversible."

Defense attorneys said Gray had been in custody for 22 months and argued the evidence showed he had tried to get mental health treatment for his son, pointing to material they said reflected Colt Gray's hostility toward his father and noting the court never heard testimony from Colt Gray himself. Prosecutors countered that the defense was blending the timeline from the son's case with the evidence in the father's trial. Prosecutor Brad Smith said Gray was convicted "for what he did know," and displayed posters investigators had found in Colt Gray's bedroom, telling the judge, "This is the risk that stared him in the face." Smith also told the court that after Gray's daughter texted him on the day of the shooting that three people had been killed at Apalachee High School, he never tried to call his son.