Apalachee High School shooter’s dad sentenced to 15 years

BREAKING NEWSJul. 30, 2026, 5:15 PM UTCGuns in AmericaGuns in AmericaApalachee High School shooter’s father sentenced to 15 yearsColin Gray gave his son an assault rifle for Christmas. The teenager used it to carry out the mass shooting in Georgia in 2024, in which two students and two teachers were killed and nine others injured. Listen to this article with a free profile00:0000:00Colin Gray, father of the Apalachee High School shooter, at Barrow County Courthouse in Winder, Ga., in March.Abbey Cutrer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, PoolShareAdd NBC News to GoogleBy Matt Lavietes and Dan GalloWINDER, Ga. — A man who gave his son an assault rifle that the teenager used to unleash a mass shooting at a Georgia high school in 2024 was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison.A jury convicted Colin Gray in March on multiple charges, including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, over the Christmas gift of the weapon his son used in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at Apalachee High School. Gray gave his son, Colt Gray, the weapon just a few months after law enforcement came to the Gray home because the teenager threatened to shoot up an elementary school, according to prosecutors.The younger Gray, now 16, was sentenced to life without parole days earlier for the shooting, which left two students and two teachers dead. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them by gunfire.The shooter was 14 at the time of the attack but was charged as an adult. His trial had been scheduled to begin in mid-October until he pleaded guilty without reaching a deal with prosecutors. He declined to address the courtroom at his own sentencing. The teenager was obsessed with mass killers, and prosecutors played jailhouse phone calls with his mother in which he appeared to relish the attention the massacre brought him.Investigators said he had become particularly fixated on the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and the...