A jury swiftly convicted a man who gave his son a gun that has been linked to the fatal shooting of two students and two teachers at a Georgia high school, the latest U.S. parent taken to court when a child is accused of violence.
Prosecutors have extended responsibility beyond the shooters if they believe there’s evidence that a parent contributed to the tragedy.
Colin Gray was found guilty of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter Tuesday in the 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, northeast of Atlanta. Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, has pleaded not guilty to a raft of charges.
Prosecutors said Colin Gray gave his son access to a gun and ammunition despite knowing that his mental health had deteriorated.
A look at other cases:
Shooting at private school
In Wisconsin, Jeffrey Rupnow is charged with intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 causing death. In 2024, his daughter, Natalie Rupnow, 15, killed a student and a teacher at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison and then killed herself.
Prosecutors said Rupnow told investigators that his daughter was struggling to cope with her parents’ divorce and that he bought her guns as a way to connect with her.
Rupnow’s attorney has argued that he acted reasonably. Natalie had passed a gun safety course, and Rupnow took the extra step of keeping guns in a safe, Lisa Goldman said at a hearing in July 2025.
Oxford school shooting
Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first U.S. parents held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by a child. They are serving 10-year prison terms for involuntary manslaughter.
Their son, Ethan Crumbley, killed four students and wounded others at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021. The school revealed his violent drawings to the Crumbleys a few hours before the shooting, but they declined to take him home. No one checked his heavy backpack for a gun.
The Crumbleys were not aware of their son’s plans, but they had given a gun as a gift a few days earlier. Prosecutors said Ethan’s actions were foreseeable and that the Crumbleys had failed to prevent the violence.
July Fourth tragedy
Robert Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty to misdemeanors for endorsing his son’s Illinois gun permit in 2019 despite knowing that Robert Crimo III had expressed suicidal thoughts.
Three years later, Crimo III killed seven people at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, a suburb north of Chicago.
“He was criminally reckless the moment he submitted that affidavit,” prosecutor Eric Rinehart said of the father.
Crimo Jr. was sentenced to 60 days in jail. His son is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in March to murder.
Boy, 6, shot teacher
Deja Taylor was prosecuted in state and federal court after her 6-year-old son took her gun to school and wounded a teacher in a classroom full of students in Newport News, Virginia, in 2023.
Taylor was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for a drug-related crime connected to possessing a gun. Separately, she was sentenced to two years in state prison for child neglect.
“That is my son, so I am, as a parent, obviously willing to take responsibility for him because he can’t take responsibility for himself,” Taylor told “Good Morning America” in 2023.
The teacher, Abigail Zwerner, told a judge she wasn’t sure “whether it would be my final moment on Earth.”
