Hello, this is Dr Grande. Today's question is: Can I analyze the case of Colt and Colin Gray? Just a reminder, I'm not diagnosing anybody in this video, only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this.
If you enjoyed this video, please like it, subscribe to my channel, and consider supporting me on Patreon. I will put the link to Patreon in the description for this video. First, I'll look at the background of this case, move to the timeline of the crime, then offer my analysis.
Colt Gray was born sometime around 2010 and lived in Jefferson, Georgia. This is about an hour and 20 minutes Northeast of Atlanta. He lived with his father, Colin Gray, his mother, Marcy Gray, and his siblings in a rented house.
Eventually, his mother, Marcy, moved out of the family home. Colt was a student at Appalachi High School in nearby Winder, Georgia. In May 2023, the police received a tip from the FBI that Colt may have threatened to shoot up a middle school.
The threat was posted on the social media platform Discord. The profile name on the account was in Russian. The translation spelled out the name 'Lanza,' as in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter, Adam Lanza.
The email address for the account was connected to Colt Gray. The police spoke to Colt. He denied making the threat, saying he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner.
He said that he shut down his Discord account after it had been hacked several times. The police described Colt's behavior during the interview as reserved and calm. Colt's father, Colin, told officers that Colt understood the seriousness of weapons and what they could do.
He knew how to use them and not use them. He indicated that his son told him, "I'm a good boy Daddy, I would never do it. " Colin said there were guns used for hunting in the house, but Colt did not have unsupervised access to them.
He had occasional access under supervision. Colin indicated that he talked to his son about school shootings quite a bit and said, "You never really know, and I don't want anything to happen to him. " The police advised Colin to keep his firearms under lock and key.
In an apparent effort to explain why Colt was ever given access to guns in the first place, Colin explained how he wanted his son to be interested in weapons to get him away from video games. He showed an officer an image of Colt with blood smeared on his face. He said it was from when Colt shot his first deer.
Colin described the day of the shooting as 'The Best Day Ever. ' Ultimately, the police did not have enough evidence to make an arrest. The Discord account had been accessed in multiple cities in Georgia, as well as in Buffalo, New York.
For Christmas of 2023, Colin allegedly purchased an AR-style rifle and gave it to Colt as a gift. Now, moving to the timeline of the crime. During the morning of September 4, 2024, a call was placed to Appalache High School indicating that the school was going to be attacked, along with four other schools.
At about 10:20 a. m. , 14-year-old Colt Gray allegedly used the AR-style rifle he had received as a Christmas gift to open fire on teachers and students.
Two teachers and two students were killed in the shooting. One teacher and eight students were wounded. The police received multiple calls reporting an active shooter at the high school.
Two school resource officers confronted Colt, and he promptly surrendered. After being read his Miranda rights, he told the police, "I did it. " Colt was charged with murder, and he will be tried as an adult.
He is facing life in prison if convicted. Colt's 54-year-old father, Colin Gray, was arrested the next day, September 5, and charged with a number of offenses including 2 counts of second-degree murder and four counts of involuntary manslaughter. He is facing a maximum of 180 years in prison.
The police indicated the charges against Colin stem from him knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon. Now moving to my analysis. Here are my thoughts on a few areas that stood out to me in this case: 1.
There have been a few reports about Colin's experiences growing up. For example, when the police were investigating the school shooting threat in 2023, Colt's father explained how his son had been ridiculed in school. He said that Colt's classmates made fun of him because they thought he was gay.
Colt would get flustered under pressure and not think straight. Colt's grandfather said that Colt was just a good kid who lived in an environment that was hostile. Colt's aunt said he struggled with mental health issues and had been begging for help from everybody around him.
Neighbors of the Grays said the family never integrated into the community after moving there in 2022. The children did not appear to be well taken care of. They would be locked out of the house and could be heard banging on the back door, screaming.
Child Protective Services and the police visited the Gray family home on a regular basis. Law Enforcement Officers discovered that Colt was obsessed with mass shooters, including Nicholas Cruz, the perpetrator of the Parkland High School shooting in Florida. There's no way to know at this point what led Colt to allegedly commit the murders, but he did have many of the risk factors associated with this type of crime.
For example, he may have had mental health difficulties, he may have been bullied in school, he was allegedly mistreated at home, including being neglected and poorly supervised. A threat about a school shooting was posted on a social media account connected to him. He glorified notorious mass shooters.
And he had access to a firearm. Item number two: Colt's mother, Marcy, did not always make a positive impression on people. A former landlord described Marcy as a blank up.
Eventually, Marcy left the family house. According to neighbors, Marcy appeared to have difficulty regulating her intake of alcohol. They would see Marcy in her driveway passed out, her vehicle would be running, and the music would be turned up loud.
Marcy was no stranger to negative interactions with law enforcement, she was charged with various traffic offenses including driving under the influence in December 2023. She pleaded guilty to using a license plate to conceal identity, criminal damage to property, and Criminal Trespass SL Family Violence. Marcy was sentenced to 5 years in jail but only served 46 days under a first offender program.
The court prohibited her from having any contact with Colt's father, Colin Gray. In April 2024, Marcy was charged with aggravated battery, theft by taking, false imprisonment, Criminal Trespass, and failure to appear. Item number three: Not much is known about Colt's father, Colin Gray, other than he was a construction worker and had custody of Colt.
As I mentioned, Colin is facing serious charges and could receive up to 180 years in prison. In his first court appearance, he was rocking back and forth and crying. The jail he is staying in should probably brace themselves for a one-star review from Cen.
The charges against Cen represent only the second time in US history that the parent of a school shooting suspect has been charged in connection with the crime. The first case involved the parents of Ethan Crumbley, Jennifer and James. They were convicted and sentenced to prison in Michigan after giving their son Ethan access to a firearm that he used in a school shooting.
Item number four: What impact will the prosecution of Colt's father, Cen, have on attitudes regarding access to Firearms? As I mentioned, Cen Gray is facing serious charges for allegedly giving his son access to a weapon used in a crime. The Crumbley case from Michigan set a precedent that parents can be held responsible for murders committed by their children.
Jennifer and James Crumbley ignored warning signs that their son Ethan was dangerous. They were not convicted simply because their son could access a handgun that they owned, it was really about the recklessness of allowing him to access it even after finding out he was struggling with mental health symptoms. In the case of Colin Gray, he knew that his son may have threatened to conduct a school shooting, and he was warned by officers to keep his weapons secured.
7 months later, Colin purchased an AR-15 style rifle for his son. It doesn't look too good for Colin as far as the involuntary manslaughter charges, however, it might be difficult for the state to prove the second-degree murder charges beyond a reasonable doubt, that seems like a stretch. The prosecutions of the Crumley's and of Colin Gray send a clear message to parents that weapons need to be secured.
Even if there is no specific law regarding securing firearms in their state, it's negligent or reckless to allow miners to have access to guns. If a gun is used by a minor to commit murder, the parents are going to join the minor in prison. One can think of it as a novel initiative to keep families together.
Research indicates that about half of gun owners who live with children do not have all their firearms secured. This is particularly disappointing considering how it's really not that hard to secure weapons. In many jurisdictions, trigger locks and cable locks are distributed to the public for free by law enforcement agencies, hospitals, and firearm retailers.
Some gun owners have expressed concerns about this new trend of securing weapons, worried that a gun with a trigger lock, for example, cannot be made ready to fire quickly in a self-defense situation like a home invasion. Most intruders are not going to politely wait as the gun owner unlocks the weapon. In most of the states that have laws mandating secure weapons, the weapon does not have to be secure if it's under the immediate control of the owner, for example, within arms reach on a nightstand next to a bed.
Furthermore, there are secure storage devices available which allow rapid access to firearms. Item number five: Some people have looked at this new prosecution initiative and said things like, "Okay, this is a good idea, parents need to be held accountable if they don't keep guns away from their children. " But is there a way to increase the impact beyond school shootings?
As terrible as they are, school shootings are relatively rare. One area that prosecutors and members of the public appear to be interested in is teenage driving. In 2022, 43 people were killed in school shootings.
During that same year, teenage drivers were involved in over 5,000 motor vehicle-related deaths. About 20 to 25% of the collisions involved teenagers who were drinking, which of course is illegal. Expanding the prosecution of the irresponsible parents to this domain would save more lives than leaving it confined to school shootings or crimes involving guns in general.
One could argue that in addition to firearms, parents need to secure their vehicles and their alcohol. Now, of course, a teenager might be legally permitted to drive. In that instance, there would only be a responsibility to secure the vehicles if the teenager had a history of dangerous driving.
Not that long ago, I covered a case that touched on this teenage driving and parental responsibility topic. A teenager in Michigan named Kieran T killed his friend in a collision that resulted from driving 80 miles an hour over the speed limit. Members of the public are calling for Kieran's mother to be charged because she was aware that Kieran had regularly driven well over 100 MPH on public roads.
As I mentioned in my video on that case, technically, under Michigan law, Kieran's mother could be charged and even found guilty. The question becomes, is this a good idea? I don't have the answer to that question, but I think the winds are currently blowing in the direction of prosecuting all irresponsible parents for everything they may have done wrong.
People are tired of all these fatalities which could have been prevented by just having a little common sense. Now, moving to my final item, number six, there's one potential shortcoming with this trend of prosecuting parents for crimes that children commit. When teenagers commit various offenses like school shootings, they are often drawn to the crime because they want to cause a lot of devastation.
They are looking to make society pay because they were mistreated, romantically rejected, ignored, or endured some other perceived hardship. From a teenager's perspective, a crime like a school shooting becomes more attractive if they can also get their parents arrested. This causes more pain, gives them revenge against their archenemies, allows them to play the victim, and now they have their parents' attention.
They can say to their parents, "Look what you made me do" or "Look what you permitted me to do. I didn't do this alone. We are guilty together.
" Those are my thoughts in the case of Colt and Colin Gray. Please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section. They consistently generate an interesting dialogue.
As always, I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be informative. Thanks for watching.
