A person whose teenage son is accused of killing two college students and two academics at a Georgia highschool ought to be held accountable for offering the weapon regardless of warnings about alleged threats his son made, a prosecutor mentioned Monday.
The trial of Colin Grey started Monday in considered one of a number of circumstances across the nation the place prosecutors try to carry dad and mom accountable after their kids are accused in deadly shootings.
Grey faces 29 counts, together with two counts of second-degree homicide, two counts of involuntary manslaughter and quite a few counts of second-degree cruelty to kids associated to the September 2024 taking pictures at Apalachee Excessive College in Winder.
“This isn’t a case about holding dad and mom accountable for what their kids do,” Barrow County District Legal professional Brad Smith mentioned in his opening assertion. “This case is about this defendant and his actions in permitting a toddler that he has custody over entry to a firearm and ammunition after being warned that that little one was going to hurt others.”
Prosecutors argue that quantities to cruelty to kids, and second-degree homicide is outlined in Georgia legislation as inflicting the dying of a kid by committing the crime of cruelty to kids.
Investigators have mentioned Colt Grey, who was 14 on the time, rigorously deliberate the Sept. 4, 2024, taking pictures on the college northeast of Atlanta that’s attended by 1,900 college students.
However Brian Hobbs, an lawyer for Colin Grey, mentioned the taking pictures’s planning and timing “had been hidden by Colt Grey from his father. That’s the distinction between tragedy and legal legal responsibility. You can’t maintain somebody criminally accountable for failing to foretell what was deliberately hidden from them.”
With a semiautomatic rifle in his e book bag, the barrel protruding and wrapped in poster board, Colt Grey boarded the varsity bus, investigators mentioned. He left his second-period class and emerged from a rest room with the gun after which shot individuals in a classroom and hallways, they mentioned.
Smith advised the jury that Colin Grey’s daughter was in lockdown at her center college and texted her father that there had been a taking pictures at the highschool. When legislation enforcement arrived at Grey’s house, he met them within the storage and “with none prompting, he blurts out, ‘I knew it,’” Smith mentioned.
Smith mentioned that in September 2021, Colt Grey used a college pc to go looking the phrase, “learn how to kill your dad.” College useful resource officers had been then despatched to the house, nevertheless it was decided to be a “misunderstanding,” Smith mentioned.
Sixteen months earlier than the taking pictures, in Could 2023, legislation enforcement acted on a tip from the FBI after a taking pictures menace was made on-line regarding an elementary college. The menace was traced to a pc at Grey’s house, Smith mentioned.
Colin Grey was advised concerning the menace and was requested whether or not his son had entry to weapons. Grey replied that he and his son “take this college taking pictures stuff very critically,” in line with Smith. Colt Grey denied that he made the menace and mentioned that his on-line account had been hacked, Smith mentioned.
That Christmas, Colin Grey gave his son the gun as a present and continued to purchase equipment after that, together with “plenty of ammunition,” Smith mentioned.
Colin Grey knew his son was obsessive about college shooters, even having a shrine in his bed room to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter within the 2018 bloodbath at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland, Florida, prosecutors have mentioned. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent had testified that the teenager’s dad and mom had mentioned their son’s fascination with college shooters however determined that it was in a joking context and never a critical situation.
Three weeks earlier than the taking pictures, Grey obtained a chilling textual content from his son: “At any time when one thing occurs, simply know the blood is in your arms,” in line with Smith.
Colin Grey was additionally conscious his son’s psychological well being had deteriorated and had sought assist from a counseling service weeks earlier than the taking pictures, an investigator testified.
“Now we have had a really troublesome previous couple of years and he wants assist. Anger, anxiousness, fast to be unstable. I don’t know what to do,” Colin Grey wrote about his son.
However Smith mentioned Colin Grey by no means adopted by means of on issues about getting his son admitted to an in-patient facility.
The trial is being held in Winder, in Barrow County, the place the taking pictures occurred. The protection requested for a change of venue due to pretrial publicity, and prosecutors agreed. The choose stored the trial in Winder however determined to herald jurors from close by Corridor County to listen to the case. Jurors had been chosen final week.
Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.