Less than a week after receiving a 15-year prison sentence for giving his son the firearm used in a deadly school shooting, the father of teenage gunman Colt Gray is asking for another chance in court.
Colin Gray was convicted in March of second-degree murder in connection with the deaths of 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, who were killed during his son’s attack at Apalachee High School.
The jury also found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter over the deaths of two educators, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Cristina Irimie.
Gray, 55, was sentenced on July 30 and is now being held at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, a maximum-security institution between Atlanta and Macon that is also home to Georgia’s death row and execution chamber.
His son, Colt Gray, now 16, had previously been sentenced to life in prison for the September 2024 mass shooting at Apalachee High School, where eight students and one teacher were also wounded.
In a two-page request for a new trial submitted Wednesday in Barrow County Superior Court, Colin Gray’s defense team argued that the conviction was “decidedly and strongly against the weight of the evidence,” according to Atlanta First News.
His attorneys further contended that the murder and involuntary manslaughter verdicts lacked evidentiary support and ran “contrary to law and the principles of justice and equity.”
During the case, prosecutors said Colin Gray overlooked repeated warning signs about his son’s declining mental health before giving him a semiautomatic rifle and ammunition as a Christmas present.
Colin Gray, 55, is requesting a new trial after being found guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, who were all killed by his son during a mass shooting
Mason Schermerhorn (second right) and Christian Angulo (far right), both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39 (far left), and Cristina Irimie, 53 (second left), were killed in the shooting at Apalachee High School on September 4, 2024
These included that his son was in a true crime community where they openly discussed their obsessions with mass shooters.
The tragedy unfolded on September 4, 2024, when Colt was aged just 14.
As authorities began to investigate, they learned Colt’s mother, Colin’s ex-wife, had asked him to secure all of his weapons in the house.
However, Colin’s attorneys argued that the teenager ‘actively hid the depth of his involvement’ in online mass shooting communities, and that Colt seemed happy and like a normal teen who liked his video games and going into the woods with his dad prior to the tragedy.
Defense attorney Brian Hobbs even claimed the then-14-year-old accelerated the attack on the school because his father was trying to get him mental health treatment, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
But Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith argued Colin ‘was convicted for what he did know,’ claiming he ignored a ‘substantial and unjustifiable risk.’
Investigator Jason Smith concurred.
‘This was the risk that he was ignoring: That there would be a mass shooting of children at a school, and he gave his son the exact tool he would need to accomplish this,’ he said.
His shooter son Colt Gray received a sentence of life in prison without parole for the mass shooting
Prosecutors said Colt had an obsession with mass shooters and received an semiautomatic rifle for Christmas from his dad
‘He is the reason four people are dead, seven were injured and countless others were traumatized, and he is the reason a 16-year-old boy was sentenced two days ago to the rest of his life in prison.’
Colin is now the first parent in the United States to serve time for murder in a mass shooting committed by their child.
At his hearing last week, Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm said he was having difficulty sentencing Colin, who has no prior criminal history, because he did not intend to commit a crime.
The judge then acknowledged that it is a divisive case in which Colin ignored foreseeable harm and failed to intervene.
‘You failed as a parent,’ Primm told Colin, noting he could have secured the firearms in the home as his ex-wife suggested, which could have prevented the deadly mass shooting.
Colin joins the ranks of James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of shooter Ethan Crumbley, who killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021.
Both Crumbleys were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for their son’s monstrosity. Ethan, like Colt, received a life in prison without parole sentence.
Colin’s attorneys argued that the teenager ‘actively hid the depth of his involvement’ in online mass shooting communities as they argued his father was not to know his son would turn deadly
Judge Nicholas Primm noted at his sentencing last week that the case was divisive
Colin’s appeal will now hinge on how Georgia law applies to the charges.
Georgia law defines second-degree murder as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children.
Under that statute, a conviction typically requires the accused to directly inflict cruelty on children resulting in their death, an attorney not connected with the case told Fox 5 Atlanta.
‘This statute says that in order to be guilty, the person must physically do cruelty to a child when the child dies,’ the lawyer said.
‘Colin Gray didn’t do anything to anyone at that school.’
As the case involves murder charges, the appeal will now advance to the Georgia Supreme Court for a formal determination.
The Daily Mail has reached out to the Barrow County District Attorney’s Office and Colin’s attorneys for comment.
