A Georgia man who gave his teenage son the gun he’s accused of using to kill two students and two teachers at a high school was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
Jurors took less than two hours to find Colin Gray guilty of all charges in the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, northeast of Atlanta. Gray now joins a growing number of parents being held responsible in court after their children were accused in shootings.
Colin Gray was found guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Georgia law defines second-degree murder as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children. Gray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the killings of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
Another teacher and eight other students were wounded. Gray was also convicted of multiple counts of reckless conduct and cruelty to children.
— Jeff Martin in Father who gave gun to Georgia school shooting suspect for Christmas is guilty of 2nd-degree murder
Does this process & outcome hold true for teenagers operating automobiles too?
Obviously, I don’t want violent attackers running around murdering people. Similarly, I don’t want anyone knowingly providing a violent attacker the means to murder someone.
Having said that, where does it end? If a parent gives a child a glass canning jar of pickles and the child uses that glass jar to fatally slice people (after breaking it to create razor-sharp edges), is the parent guilty of manslaughter for providing the glass jar? We could say the same if a parent gives their child a pillow and the child used his/her pillow to smother another child to death. Of course we have to think about other sharp objects such as kitchen knives and landscaping implements (such as axes and machetes). Is a parent guilty of murder if their child uses a kitchen knife or ax to murder people? What if the parents bought their teenage child a car and the child uses that car to run people over and murder them? Do we imprison the parents in that case as well?
Heck, an adolescent could even use a robust plastic bag to smother someone or common household chemicals to poison someone. Do we thus require parents to convert their homes into giant toddler-proof structures where adolescents and teenage children cannot possibly access anything that they could use to maim/murder someone?
I remember a case (Ohio?) where the school counselors, Principal and vice principal who’s “advice” the parents followed were held blameless. Like here, the parents were held responsible. Schools seem to have been given greater authority, where a parent does as they dictate or one phone call has their child taken and put into a system. The parents have no say until after the fact. But they will be required to pay whatever medical or other “services” the bureaucrats require. And I suspect teens texting & driving causes a lot more deaths… So when do their parents be charged for providing the car and phone?