Jury Selected For Trial Of Accused Apalachee School Shooter's Dad

WINDER, GA — Jury selection concluded this week for the trial of Colin Gray, the father of the teen accused of killing two students and two teachers in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.

Selection of the 15-person jury began at the Hall County Courthouse on Monday and wrapped up on Wednesday, according to a WSB-TV report. The judge approved 12 jurors and three alternates for Gray's trial, which is expected to start Monday.

Gray's son, Colt Gray, is accused of fatally shooting two teachers and two students on Sept. 4, 2024, when he opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder. Another teacher and eight other students were wounded.

Killed in the shooting were teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo.

Colin Gray faces 29 counts in connection with the shooting, including two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter and numerous counts of second-degree cruelty to children related to the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder.

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An indictment against Gray committed cruelty to children by giving his son access to a gun and ammunition “after receiving sufficient warning that Colt Gray would harm and endanger the bodily safety of another.” Second-degree murder, an unusual charge under Georgia law, is defined as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children.

Gray has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Investigators have said Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time, carefully planned the shooting at the school northeast of Atlanta that 1,900 students attend.

He wrote step-by-step plans for the assault in a notebook, including diagrams and potential body counts, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified at a hearing the month after the shooting.

With a semiautomatic, assault-style rifle in his book bag, the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster board, he boarded the school bus, investigators said. He left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the gun and then shot people in a classroom and hallways, investigators said.

Gray had given his son the assault-style weapon as a Christmas gift and was aware that the child's mental health had deteriorated in the weeks before the shooting, investigators testified at an earlier hearing. Gray also was aware that his son was obsessed with school shooters and even had a shrine above his home computer for the gunman in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school massacre, prosecutors said.

Colin Gray is the first adult known to be charged in a school shooting in Georgia, and his indictment is the latest example of prosecutors holding parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings.

Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley, the first to be convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting, were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.