(NewsNation) — After Colin Gray, the father of Georgia high school shooting suspect Colt Gray, was charged in the death of four people at Apalachee High School, the issue of parental responsibility in connection with a fatal school shooting has again catapulted into the national spotlight.
Gray remains in jail after he was charged on Thursday with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder, and cruelty to children. Prosecutors have not provided details about Gray’s ties to his son’s actions this week, but multiple media outlets reported on Thursday investigators have indicated Colin Gray purchased an AR-15 for his son for Christmas.
Neither Colon or Colt Gray have requested that bail be set,
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at a news conference on Thursday that the criminal charges Gray is facing stem from him “knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon.”
The alleged purchase of the assault weapons by Colin Gray came months after he and his son met with the FBI about threats of school gun violence that Colt Gray allegedly made online.
During that meeting, Colin Gray told investigators that he had discussed the dangers of guns with his son as well as “all the school shootings, the things that happen,” The New York Times reported. He also said that he had been teaching his son about guns and hunting as a way of getting his son to spend less time playing video games, the report said.
“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” Mr. Gray told the investigator during the meeting with the FBI, the New York Times reported.
The filing of criminal charges against Gray came in the same year as Jennifer and James Crumbley became the first parents in U.S. history to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter in connection with a deadly school shooting in Michigan.
Jennifer and James Crumbley
In separate trials, Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of convicted school shooter Ethan Crumbley, were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter in connection to the 2021 fatal shooting of four Oxford High School students in Michigan.
Both received prison sentences of 10-15 years for their role in the slayings. Ethan Crumbley is serving a life sentence for murder and other crimes.
Judge Cheryl Matthews said the case wasn’t about poor parenting but about the couple avoiding actions that “could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”
“Opportunity knocked over and over again — louder and louder — and was ignored,” the judge said at the sentencing hearing, according to the Associated Press. “No one answered.”
Prosecutors say Ethan’s parents were grossly negligent when she failed to tell Oxford High School officials that the family had guns, including a 9mm handgun that was used by their son at a shooting range just a few days earlier.
Besides knowledge of the gun, the Crumbleys are accused of ignoring their son’s mental health needs. In a journal found by police in his backpack, the son wrote his parents wouldn’t listen to his pleas for help.
Before their respective trials, the Crumbleys have been in jail for more than two years, unable to post $500,000 bond while awaiting trial.
James Crumley was convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in April, a month after his wife was found guilty of the same charge.
After the verdict was read, defense attorney Mariell Lehman said that her client “obviously feels terrible” about the 2021 shooting.
Prosecutors focused on two key themes at the trial: the parents’ response to a morbid drawing on Ethan Crumbley’s math assignment a few hours before the shooting, and the teen’s access to a Sig Sauer 9 mm handgun purchased by James Crumbley only four days earlier.
However, James and Jennifer Crumbley declined to take their son home following a brief meeting at the school, and staff didn’t demand it. A counselor, concerned about suicidal ideations, told them to seek help for the boy within 48 hours.
Jennifer Crumbley expressed “deepest sorrow” about the school shooting but blamed the school for not giving the parents more information about their son.
“The prosecution has tried to mold us into the type of parents society wants to believe are so horrible only a school or mass shooter could be bred from,” Jennifer Crumbley said, according to the AP. “We were good parents. We were the average family.”
Deja Taylor
Deja Taylor, the mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his first grade teacher at a Virginia elementary school, was sentenced to two years in prison after she pleaded guilty to one felony count of child neglect.
Taylor was charged criminally after the teacher, Abigail Zwerner, was shot in the hand and chest after the student pulled a gun out of his backpack and fired.
The boy’s family said in a statement that the child had an “acute disability” and had previously been accompanied to school each day by his mother or father. The week of the shooting was the first time that a parent had not been in class with him, the statement said, according to the New York Times.
“We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives,” the family statement said.
In sentencing the boy’s mother, the judge in the case said that Taylor had abdicated her responsibilities as a parent, which led to “egregious results”.
Taylor’s son told authorities he got his mother’s 9mm handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mom’s purse. He concealed the weapon in his backpack and then his pocket before shooting Zwerner, in front of her first-grade class.
Taylor initially told investigators she had secured her gun with a trigger lock, but investigators said they never found one.
Taylor was also sentenced to 21 months in prison after being convicted of federal felony charges, including unlawful use of a controlled substance while possessing a firearm and making a false statement while purchasing a gun.
Under the sentencing guidelines, Taylor is also prohibited from having unsupervised visits with her now-7-year-old son until he is 18.
In addition to Taylor’s connection to the shooting, the former assistant principal at the school faces charges connected to the shooting. Ebony Parker was charged with one count of felony child neglect.
A grand jury determined that Parker showed a reckless disregard for the students at Richneck Elementary School. Parker, along with other school officials, were already named in a $40 million lawsuit that was filed by Zwerner. The lawsuit alleges that Parker and others ignored multiple warnings that the 6-year-old boy had brought a gun to school and was in a violent mood.