(Headline USA) The father of accused school shooter Colt Gray testified Friday that he gave his son the rifle that was used in the attack as a Christmas present in hopes of bonding with the boy over hunting and outings at the gun range.
In one of the latest cases in which parents are being put on trial after their children are accused in fatal shootings, defense lawyers called Colin Gray to the witness stand. Prosecutors say he should be held accountable for giving his son the weapon used in the shooting as a Christmas gift despite alleged threats and warning signs that the boy was mentally unstable.
After the family had opened presents, Colin Gray said he walked down the hallway and told Colt, “I have one more thing for you.” He presented the gun, hoping it would encourage Colt to succeed in school.
“This is a weapon that I want you to shoot when we go to the range, and if you keep doing really good in school, going to school and doing all the things you should, you graduate and you’re 18, this will be your gun,” Colin Gray said he told his son.
Colt, who was 14 years old at the time of the shooting, faces 55 counts, including murder in the deaths of four people and 25 counts of aggravated assault. He’s accused of carefully planning the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at Apalachee High School that left two teachers and two students dead and several others wounded at the school in Winder, northeast of Atlanta.
The father faces 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The trial of Colin Gray, now ending its second week, has included testimony from the boy’s mother, Marcee Gray, who testified that she urged her husband to lock up the guns so that Colt could not access them. But in the days before the school shooting, Colt kept the gun in his bedroom, witnesses have testified at his father’s trial.
Colin Gray became emotional after being asked by his lawyer whether there were any “red flags” that would have made him believe his son would ever be capable of a school shooting.
“No, I struggle with it every day,” the father said, trying to hold back tears.
“He’s a good kid,” he added. “He wasn’t perfect, and nor was I. But to do something that heinous, like I don’t know of anybody that can ever see that kind of evil. Like the Colt I knew and the relationship I had — there’s this whole other side of Colt I didn’t know existed.”
Gray took the stand a day after prosecutors showed surveillance video of the morning of the shooting. The video shows Colt getting on his school bus with a backpack that prosecutors contend carried the rifle. The weapon protruded from the backpack, and posterboard was used to conceal it, prosecutors have said.
In the video, Colt is seen entering the school with the backpack. He walks down several hallways past dozens of students and some employees who don’t take notice of the large size of the pack. Colt then begins classes, and later that morning spends several minutes in a bathroom moments before the shooting.
Video of the gunfire was played for jurors, but not shown to the general public watching the livestream of the trial.
The parents were separated for much of the time leading up to the shooting, and Marcee Gray was not charged with any crimes.
In dramatic testimony last week, several Georgia high school students testified in court about being shot during their algebra class. They recounted through tears seeing a classmate in a pool of blood, then seeing blood on their own bodies and fearing they might die.
There has also been testimony about what prosecutors describe as a “shrine” to a Florida school shooter that Colt kept on a wall next to his computer at home.
Colt had an interest in Nikolas Cruz, convicted of the 2018 shooting that left 14 students and three staff members dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Marcee Gray testified this week.
This is one of several cases around the nation where prosecutors are trying to hold parents responsible after their children are accused in fatal shootings.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
