Apalachee Dad Gets 15 Years for Arming School Shooter Son

Colin Gray, father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for second-degree murder after giving his then-14-year-old son the assault rifle used in the September 2024 Georgia school shooting that killed two students and two teachers. On The Ryan Samuels Show, we break down the landmark case, the ignored mental health warnings, parental responsibility, and what this rare conviction means for gun access and accountability in America.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_07 1:32

Hey Ryan, hi, that's Sarah Keeling.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Ryan Donald Trump Jr. Hey, everybody check out a Philomorines podcast. My name is Jed Gooch, and I got a call from my buddy Ryan F. Samuels, and he wants me to tell you that he's a working hard, playing all American son of a f who is celebrating God's family country.

SPEAKER_12 1:54

Welcome to the Ryan Samuel Show, one of the top political podcasts in the United States, where we have a healthy discount for government and main free media. The Ryan Samuel Show is a raw, unfiltered look at American politics. Follow on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Rumble, and all podcast platforms. Here is your host, Ryan Samuels.

SPEAKER_11 2:17

Good evening, America. Welcome to another episode of the Ryan Samuel Show. Do not forget we are live Monday through Friday at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You can find us on Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. I don't do TikTok yet. I'm a little nervous to do TikTok because they're super strict, and anything I say, they'll just ban me in a second. I have to be very careful what I post on TikTok, considering we've just gained thousands of followers since I opened my account a few months ago. Don't want to lose that. I like to advertise the show on there. You could check it out. It's a little bit limited. I maybe get one post in every other day or something like that. But feel free to check out TikTok. And tonight, a dad of a school shooter has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. Now, the school shooting's horrific. It's tragic. Wish it never happened. Four people were killed, two students, two teachers, and nine other people were wounded. The community was shattered, and young men who walked into Appalachian school, and the young man who walked into the Appalachian high school with a rifle and opened fire is already going to spend the rest of his life in prison. That's life without the possibility of parole. That part of the story is settled. So the kid walks into school, shoots people, and he gets life without parole. Not even possible to be paroled at the age of 14 years old. So they sentenced the kid's father, Colin Gray, to 15 years in prison. 15 years. Not for planning the attack, not for knowing the day it would happen, not for pulling the trigger, not for driving his son to school that morning. He was sentenced because he bought his son an AR-style rifle as a Christmas gift. And because the state decided he failed to do enough to stop what came next. They convicted him on second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter under a theory of criminal negligence. In plain English, they said his parenting was so bad that it made him legally responsible for the murders his son committed. This is the second time something like this has happened in American history. The first was James and Jennifer Crumbly, the parents of the Oxford High School shooter in Michigan. They each received 10 to 15 years after their son killed four students. Now Colin Gray becomes the second. I'm not here to say Colin Gray was a good father. The record shows there were warning signs. Clearly, which we're going to go over. There was a prior police visit over online threats. There were mental health struggles. There was a rifle that should never have been in that boy's hands. There was a real failure. They matter and they should be part of the conversation. But there is a massive difference between saying a father failed his son and saying that failure should cost him 15 years of his life in a prison cell. Once we accept the idea that the state can imprison a parent after the fact because their child committed a horrific crime, we cross the line. Bad parenting is not the same thing as murder. Negligence is not the same thing as intent, and you, quote, should have done more is not the standard that belongs in a criminal courtroom when the parent did not plan, assist, or carry out an attack. The shooter is already being held fully accountable. Life without parole. That is justice for the victims and their families. What we are watching with these parent with these parent prosecutions is something else entirely. It is the state expanding its reach into the home and creating a new category of criminal liabilities based on how well or how poorly someone raised their child. That should concern every parent in this country because the standard will not stay limited to most these most extreme cases. Once the door is open, it rarely closes. Today it's a father who gave a son a rifle. Tomorrow, it will be whatever set of facts a prosecutor decides is close enough. This is not about being soft on crime. This is about keeping the government inside its proper lane. The person who murdered four people is already locked away forever. Turning the father into a secondary villain may feel satisfying in the moment, but it sets a precedent that would make us all that should make all of us uneasy. Tonight we're going to dig into this case. We're going to look at the facts, the warning sides, the legal theory, and a much larger question of where parental responsibility ends and state power begins. Because once the state decides it can lock parents up for the crimes of their children, none of us should pretend the line won't keep moving. We will be right back. Don't go anywhere. Don't forget, I'm sure a lot of you disagree. That's fine. But you can call into the show five six six six six six six one seven eight six two nine one six. Drop a comment down below. Let me know what you think, and we will be right back. This is very concerning to me. Very concerning to me. We kind of covered that in the opening, in the opening discussion there, the opening monologue. But the government will not stop once they can find a loophole. Here's the one thing I can tell you about prosecutors. Prosecutors are just as bad, if not worse, than defendant attorneys. Defending attorneys are actually fighting for your rights. They do a service to the country. What prosecutors are supposed to do is prosecutors are supposed to decipher whether or not they should actually charge you with crimes. They're supposed to look at it objectively and say, I think this guy committed a crime. We're going to go ahead and charge him. Not find the person, then find the crime, which is what our country has come to. We're seeing deterioration in morality in the legal field, which kind of always existed, but it's supposed to be higher on the side of the prosecution. The government is supposed to say, yeah, I understand what the police found. We're looking at it. I don't really think this is worth pursuing and kind of move on. But we're we're not, we're not seeing that. What we're seeing is prosecutors prosecute for the sake of prosecution so that they can be recognized for prosecuting somebody. We saw this with Donald Trump. We've seen this with countless cases. This has been happening in the African American community forever, but until probably 50 years ago, they hadn't had the opportunity to be heard and be seen. I mean, we we've seen it with the with numerous cases, not just in the African-American community, but in the white community. Everybody and anybody can suffer the consequences of the full authority of the law if a prosecutor is willing to prosecute it. That's all it takes. And that's not how our system of government is supposed to be designed. It's not. This school shooting is horrific, it's terrible, it's horrible, and it should not have happened. It shouldn't have happened. But trying to blame or find more blame than the person that committed the crime elsewhere is not gonna be. Hold on, I can't do two things at once. It's it's idolizing and glorifying these situations when they happen and making them incredibly big news stories and talking about them nonstop. And I I hate to do that. I try not to do it, but we do cover it. There are a lot of podcasters who won't even say the shooters' names because they don't want to celebrate it. But this was a horrific tragedy. It happened, I think, last year or the year before. Here's a clip from what happened.

SPEAKER_08 12:50

As the sheriff mentioned earlier this morning, the shooter is in custody.

SPEAKER_11 12:58

Really can't hear that. It's just the sheriff saying, or the local police officer saying that the shooter is in custody. His name is Colt Gray.

SPEAKER_12 13:07

We got a whole school to get evacuated, people. Come on now.

SPEAKER_11 13:11

Here is video footage inside the school after it had happened. We got a whole school to get evacuated, people. Come on now. I mean, children of our youth should be able to go to school and not have to deal with this stuff. This all started with Columbine. That was that was the first big one. I remember that in 1999. I remember I was at my friend's house and their dad told us about it. But this kid obviously had some issues. Another main issue is uh putting kids on all of these medications. Parents who don't know how to parent or single mothers putting their children on ADHD medication, putting them on Adderall or all of these other things, and therapists who are throwing it out like candy, psychiatrists who are throwing it out like candy. You don't even have to go to a psychiatrist anymore. You can just go to the doctor, fill out a questionnaire, and they'll give your kid a prescription for basically anything that you want, because that is the society that we live in. It is not good for underdeveloped brains to be taking these psychotic and psychiatric medications. ADHD is a mental disorder. It's a learning, it's a it's not even a learning disability. It's categorized as a mental disorder by the diagnostic and statistics manual. And, you know, just go ahead and ask any therapist or psychiatrist that, you know, how many people have you ever cured? They can't tell you because 90% of it is BS. It's not real. It's a lot of parents with narcissistic personality disorders trying to control their children and tell them there's something wrong with them. In single mother households, it is the most prevalent and overdiagnosed disorder in the history of mankind. Some estimates that it's 83%, I think it's 83% of children in single mother homes are diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder. But in single father homes, it's more aligned with the ratio of double parent homes, dual parent homes. Because mothers tend to be less disciplinarian, less likely to hold the child accountable, blame everybody else in the world rather than the child themselves, or the dad'll say, You're being an idiot, knock it out, you're not doing that. Do what you're told, do your homework, end of discussion. We're not finding excuses for the world as to why the child is a victim. So that's that's a big part of it too. You you over you over-medicate an entire population of underdeveloped minds, you and you you glorify them with horrific and horrible video games. You take the you take religion and church out of society and the Ten Commandments out of the classroom, and there's no higher power to hold them accountable in their minds because they haven't learned about them, you're gonna get these kinds of situations. You're gonna get a serious and frequent scenario that just keeps reoccurring. Kids that age have very fragile minds. Once somebody does it and everybody talks about them, they just want to be talked about. They want to be remembered. Now you have a kid. At the age of 14, you're like, oh, we're gonna try him as an adult. I never understood that. I never understood that as a police officer either. I would ask questions. It's not about actually applying the appropriate charges. Kid's 14, yeah, he murdered people. Horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Life without the possibility of parole. We're trying him as an adult. Now he's not 17 trying him as an adult. He's 14 years old. We're locking him up for the absolute rest of his life. I believe there's a law, this happened in Georgia. I believe there's a law that minors can't be executed or you can't be executed for crimes when you were a minor. But if the prison system is supposed to rehabilitate people and turn them back out to be productive citizens, you know, then giving a 14-year-old life without the possibility of parole is challenging. I'm not saying I don't I totally disagree with it. I just don't understand. Here's what I don't understand about trying a child as an adult. They're either they're either legally responsible because of their age and their brain development at that age for their crimes, or they're not. There is like no category of crime that's higher than another in terms of being able to understand what they should have done differently. You they're either you you charge it's either you're either charged one them all as adults for the same crime, or this type of crime has a harsher sentence, but I just don't understand it. I'm not saying I disagree with it. I I'm not comfortable with a kid who went to a school and shot it up with an AR-15 being released back out into sci society. I am not okay with that. That's not like that. I'm just saying that the cherry picking and choosing of when to do it and when not to do it is what I'm uncomfortable with. So this kid, this kid's dad, as many dads do, gave his son a rifle for Christmas. I think that year, when he was 13 or 14 or something, gave him a rifle for Christmas. From what I understand, it's not that he let him keep it in his room. The kid wasn't allowed to like take it to the store. Like that's from what I understand. But let's watch this clip and let's go from there.

SPEAKER_10 19:18

The state played jurors security footage from inside Appalachian High School in Winder, Georgia on September. First of all, 2024.

SPEAKER_11 19:26

Here he is, right? This is him walking into the school. He's got his backpack. There's a giant towel sticking out of it, and it's wrapped around. What the like? What what is up with this? Like, obviously, you should be concerned, right? There's school shootings monthly in the United States, almost. And you got this kid walking in, he's got a giant thing sticking out of his backpack to over his head. He didn't even break it down because he doesn't know how to break it down. Probably. It's just sticking out like wrapped in a towel or something. And nobody's going like, hey man, what's what's what's in there? Like, people need to be on high alert. Teachers need to be on high alert, like, hey, oh, come here, what's in that bag? Stop.

SPEAKER_10 20:22

Just walking through all of these people. High school in Winder, Georgia. On September 4th, 2024, Gray's son Colt is alleged to have opened fire in the school, killing two students and two teachers. Cameras caught Colt Gray in class, fidgeting, texting, then eventually walking into a bathroom with his backpack, where he contacted his mother, who then called the school. A short while later, resource officers go into the bathroom and take out a different student with a similar name. Colt follows afterwards, wearing yellow gloves, carrying the bag with a poster board concealing an AR-15 style rifle. The final image allowed to be shown by the court's pool camera. Colt peering into a classroom holding the firearm. Today, as prosecutors begin the horrible began their replay of the actual shooting, the pool camera shifted to Colts' father Colin, who immediately broke down in tears. Over the last nine days, jurors have heard witness testimony from Colin's estranged wife and daughter, first responders, as well as students and staff who were impacted both physically and emotionally.

SPEAKER_11 22:01

Talking about what happened that day.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

I started running. He started shooting like 10 times. He shot at least at least 10 times. And then I ran to the back of the classroom. I dived behind the desk and my teacher had got in front of me. Like he was guarding. Like the gunshots were so close to me, like my ears started ringing real bad. Like the whole classroom was smoking, like, and everything. And then I got when they find when he finally um got out of the classroom, my teacher started barricading the door with discs and bookshelves and all that. And then and then I had got up. When I had got up, I had saw I had saw one of my classmates on the ground bleeding so bad. And then when I had I had moved myself to the other side of the room because I when the deck the bookshelf I was hiding behind, it was right in front of the door. So I had moved to the other side, to like this side with my friend. I was checking on my other friend because he got grazed in his leg. And then there was a white girl that was in front of me. She got shot in her leg and stuff. And then my other friend got shot in her stomach, and it was just so sad. Stuff like that.

SPEAKER_05 23:12

Are you okay?

SPEAKER_04 23:13

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_05 23:15

That's a lot to process. And you're so young. You're how old? 14. That's so much to have to process in class where you're supposed to feel safe.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:28

How are you doing now? I mean, what's going through your mind?

SPEAKER_04 23:32

Well, it just keeps replaying back in my head. I just thank God that I wasn't the one that got hit. You know, like in the midst of all of it happening, I was just thanking God. And stuff like that. Cause I could have been the one that got hit because I was right there. He could've eaten.

SPEAKER_11 25:29

The reason you didn't get hit is because he's a 14-year-old idiot who doesn't really know what he's doing. Horrible. Kid children should not have to deal with that. Like at all. But prosecuting your parents is not going to fix the situation.

SPEAKER_10 25:56

Colin Gray appeared stoic as Judge Nicholas Prim decided his fate in a Georgia courtroom Thursday. The mindline for classic part of Ryan. Gray's son, Colt, killed two teachers and two students at Appalachia High School in 2024. On Tuesday, the same judge sentenced the team to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colin Gray was convicted of murder and manslaughter in March. The state said it was his negligence that led to the shooting, in part because he gifted his son the AR-15 style rifle used to carry out the shooting. In an emotional week of testimony, loved ones of the victims blame Gray for the shooting.

SPEAKER_06 26:43

He was a single parent by choice. I am now a solo parent because of his actions and lack of parenting.

SPEAKER_11 26:52

I get it, man. I get it. It's horrible, and they want somebody to blame. They want to blame the parent because their kid would never do anything like that. That's the problem. Their kid doesn't have the same issues that this kid had. Their kid is dead and it's bad and it's horrible, and they want to blame the parent. But a lot of times it's not only the parent's fault. This dad is divorced. He has custody of the kid. The mother's not around. But the mother's not to blame. We have a hard time blaming females in society or in holding them accountable. But I I understand. I understand what they would that they're concerned. I understand that they're heartbroken. I understand that it's terrible. I understand that emotions are high. But simply because he bought him an AR of 15 as a dad, dads buy their kids rifles all the time. And they're saying that there are warning signs that he made a, I guess, a joke on a Discord channel about he made a joke on a Discord channel about a school shooter or something. Right. Horrible. Terrible. You shouldn't be making jokes like that. But kids say the dumbest, stupidest, horrible things on a daily basis. If you ever if you ever did an analysis of all of the children in the country who made a joke about a school shooting, you would find that it's probably 30 to 40% of them. And nearly none of them conduct a school shooting. But after the fact, hindsight's 2020. And now they want accountability.

SPEAKER_06 28:51

People keep calling this a tragedy. It was. The tragedies are unavoidable. This wasn't unavoidable. This was preventable.

SPEAKER_10 29:01

Gray is the third parent in the nation to face criminal prosecution after a mass school shooting carried out by their child.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

This is sort of the wild west when it comes to how are we going to hold these parents criminally accountable. This is just the beginning of a whole slew, really, of case law, I think, that is coming down the pike.

SPEAKER_09 29:22

Colin Gray declined to speak in court on behalf of his counsel. His lawyers say that they are planning on appealing his conviction. The judge overseeing this case says that while this may be the end of the legal chapter in all of this, this is something that families and the overall community will be dealing with for some time.

SPEAKER_11 29:41

Well, yeah, of course. Of course. But notice how they said that this is case law. Now, what case law is that it's basically law that's generated out of the court. That the courts are just basically making up their own laws as they go about, as they live their lives. They're just creating it. Now, laws, populism, is supposed to be created by politicians, by politicians who are elected by members of the community in accordance with the Constitution of the United States. And of course, the state, the local state constitutions. That is how laws are supposed to be created, not by judges on a bench who really aren't held accountable to anybody, and they just fill it all with nuance and make terrible decisions on a daily basis. So now this isn't a law enacted by Congress. This isn't a law enacted by state Congress and senators that parents shall be held responsible for their children's actions with poor behavior. So in order for it to be a law, you have to be notified that it's a law. You don't have to individually be notified that it's a law, but you know you can't speed. If there's a law in the books, ignorance of the law is no excuse. If there is no law in the books, and then a judge decides to make it up and a court and a prosecutor and a in a corrupt system takes you to court to put you through the system to create its own law and then put you in jail and set a precedence that this is what we do to parents of children who commit crimes. Now, this is the future. Now it's school shooters. Then it'll be kids who steal cars. It'll be kids who steal candy, the parents responsible to pay the stores damages. It's criminal negligence. You didn't raise your child right. Your child was out after nine o'clock at night. Well, they snuck out the window. I have no idea. It doesn't matter. Shitty parent. Lock them up. Because when they were out, they ran on somebody's doorbell and ran away. It's criminal mischief. And now you're responsible. The state can take it as far as they want to. That's what they do. That's what the state does. It moves in its own self-interest, not yours. It moves in getting itself more power, more oppression, more authority, more, more, more. They are never satisfied. Ever. So what's the difference between this and your kid skipping school? Well, you're excuse me, sir, your your child made a joke on Discord ten years ago about skipping school, and then he skipped school. We notified you he made that joke. We we we told you he made that joke. You did nothing about it. You bought him a skateboard that he could therefore use to skate away from school. Straight to jail. Put him straight to jail. Lock him up.

SPEAKER_13 33:21

You were convicted because the warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter. And you didn't get him help, and you didn't remove his access to the guns. It became more and more obvious that something bad was going to happen. And you failed to do the simplest things to prevent this.

SPEAKER_07 33:47

Colin Gray's son Colt was sentenced just three days ago to life without parole after being found guilty of murder and involuntary manslaughter for killing two students and two teachers in 2024 in an indie 2024 shooting that left several others hurt.

SPEAKER_11 34:07

Horrible. Absolutely terrible. Concurrent with one another. Here is the judge again. Yeah. Judges drive me insane. They always have. They've always drived me insane. Always have driven me insane. They sit up there and then they yell at defendants. It's like, dude, the guy, just do your job. He's getting sentenced. You don't have to publicly shame him. You don't have to ridicule him because you do that, and then this is what they used to do 70s, 80s, 90s, 50s, 60s. Then DNA came out and they found out half of the people on death row didn't even commit the crime, and these people were publicly ridiculed and done by a judge. I mean, what if they they appeal this and it gets overturned? Right? I mean, I get that they're convicted as guilty, but that doesn't mean you get to sit there and shame them. It's stupid. Like, shut up. Just say, okay, well, in coordinate, yeah, you were found guilty by a jury of your peers. We're gonna go ahead and I've looked at the circumstances with all the evidence presented to me. I'm going to sentence you to 10 years in jail, sir. Good luck. Best of luck. God bless. That's it. That's it. You don't have to be a witness. Oh, well, I heard from this person and I heard from that person today, and these people told me this, so therefore it must be true. Remember, you can be a D student and be a lawyer, which means you can be a D student and be a judge.

SPEAKER_13 35:46

For each of the murders in the second degree, I'm sentencing you to 15 years in confinement concurrent with one another. For each of the involuntary manslaughters, I'm sentencing you to 10 years confinement concurrent. For each non-emerging cruelty to children, I'm sentencing you to 10 years in confinement. Cruelty to children.

SPEAKER_11 36:09

This guy was sentenced to cruel cruelty to children. What did he do that was cruel? I maybe he made a poor choice by not locking up his firearm, but as every firearm owner knows, how are you supposed to get to it if it's locked away? In the middle of the night, somebody kicks in the door. It's like, oh no, let me run to my safe. Oh no. Now they're in the house. You gotta be able to get to it. It's not like this guy gave this 14-year-old a firearm and said, here, leave this in your room. Not from what anywhere I read. I could be wrong, but not from where anywhere that I read. There used to be a time in this country where you would take your gun to school on your gun rack in your pickup truck. Culture is the problem. SSRIs are the problem. Putting kids on ADHD medication is the problem. Putting kids on antidepressants is the problem. To fund pharmaceutical companies' pockets, murder suicide pills is the problem. Cruelty to children for buying his kid a gun at 14 years old.

SPEAKER_13 37:48

This is an aggregate sentence of 15 years in prison. I'm gonna have the sentence filed presently. Those have to be filed within 30 days of today's date. You have the right to file a petition for habeas corpus to challenge any violation of your constitutional rights or any legal errors that has to be filed within four years of today's date. You have no right to a court-appointed attorney for a habeas corpus petition because it's a civil proceeding. I'll ask defense counsel to placehold motion for you. If you need court-appointed counsel, make sure you apply so that you can comply with those 30-day deadlines. If your motion for new trial is denied, you have a right to a court-appointed counsel and can file an appeal from that within 30 days of that denial. This only closes the legal chapter of this horror. The pain, the heartache, they continue. I understand that. I hope all of you know that this community loves you, and I ask that God gives you peace. Thank you.

SPEAKER_11 39:19

I'm trying to find this one video here. I think this might be it. Let's listen to this. It matters. Here, here. This is the video. This is the judge literally outlining every reason that this guy should not be convicted of a crime. He he literally sit here. I wanted to play this first, but I played the wrong video. So it is what it is. He literally sits here and reads out every reason this guy shouldn't be convicted. Listen.

SPEAKER_13 39:53

It matters that you didn't have actual knowledge that Colt was going to school to do that. It matters that you didn't intentionally commit a crime. It matters that you didn't plan an attack. Right. It matters that you didn't seek to harm anyone. Uh-huh. It matters that you didn't pull a trigger. I'm sentencing you to fifteen years in confinement concurrent with one another for each of the vol involuntary manslaughters. I'm sentencing you to ten.

SPEAKER_11 40:21

It matters you didn't plan this. It matters you didn't pull the trigger. It matters that you didn't know that this was happening. It matters that you're completely innocent in this. It matters that your son made a horrible decision to go do this that day. It matters.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Does it matter?

SPEAKER_11 40:49

It doesn't sound like it matters. It doesn't sound like that's something that matters to the judge. I mean, I I think that maybe there were some signs, but you don't know that there's signs half of the time until after the fact. Hindsight's always 20-20. You gotta put yourself in the position of the individual at the time before the crime was committed. Not after the crime, knowing what you know now. It's a shame. This is only gonna get worse. I mean, the government power is just it's gonna get worse. It it's not gonna stop. It's gonna happen for shoot. Man, the only the only way to stop it is to is to just shut down the whole system and start from scratch. Like, hey, it's 1776 again. No other laws have been passed except the Declaration of Independence. And yeah, we're working on the the Federalist papers, and we'll kind of go from there. The United States will eventually grow into complete and utter totalitarianism. I mean, it already has, you just don't know it. You just don't know it. Not really much you can do. But that is it for tonight. We're gonna cut it a little bit short. I want you guys to have a great weekend. If you're listening, drop a comment down below. Don't forget to hit that like, share, and subscribe button. Go to Ryan Fsamuels.com, check out the news section, read an article, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, drop a review on the podcast. We will see you Monday night.