Jury convicts suspected Georgia school shooter’s father of murder
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, sits in the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance, on September 6, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (Brynn Anderson-Pool/Getty Images)
(ATLANTA) — A Georgia jury found Colin Gray guilty Tuesday on charges including second-degree murder and manslaughter, stemming from a 2024 mass shooting allegedly committed by his teenage son with a rifle he gifted him as a Christmas present.
The jury found the 55-year-old Gray guilty of 27 counts. Two other counts were dropped. The jury deliberated fewer than two hours before returning their verdicts.
Colin Gray was charged with multiple counts of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and cruelty to children. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Gray’s son, Colt Gray, now 16, allegedly killed two students and two teachers and injured eight students in a Sept. 4, 2024, mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Colt Gray has been charged as an adult and is awaiting a separate trial on multiple counts of felony murder and aggravated assault. He has pleaded not guilty.
During the two-week trial, Barrow County prosecutors presented evidence that Colin Gray had been warned that his son had an affinity for mass shooters and was aware that Colt kept a shrine in his bedroom dedicated to the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Instead of getting his son psychological help, Colin Gray allegedly gave the boy an AR-15-style weapon as a Christmas present that he ultimately used to carry out the mass shooting at Apalachee High School, prosecutors alleged.
On Friday, Colin Gray took the witness stand in his own defense and broke down while being questioned about whether he noticed any “red flags” that would have led him to believe the boy was capable of committing a mass shooting.
“I struggle with it every day,” Colin Gray testified. “He’s a good kid, you know? He wasn’t perfect, but to do something, uh, that heinous, like I don’t, I don’t know if anybody would see that type of evil.”
During his testimony, Gray confirmed that he gave his son the AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas present, telling jurors the gift came with rules.
“This is a weapon that I want you to shoot when we go to the range, and if you keep doing really good in school, going to school and doing all the things you should, you graduate and you’re 18, this will be your gun,” Colin Gray said he told his son.
he Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building on December 19, 2025 in Washington, DC. The U.S. Department of Justice is required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein today. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — After years of legal battles and online speculation, the Justice Department on Friday is set to release what a top DOJ official says are “several hundred thousand” documents from the investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose connection to the rich and powerful and 2019 death by suicide has generated scores of conspiracy theories.
The DOJ faces a Friday deadline for the release of all remaining Epstein files after Congress last month passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act following the blowback the administration received seeking the release of the materials.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in an interview Friday morning on Fox and Friends, said, “I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today … and then over the next couple of weeks I expect several hundred thousand more.”
“The most important thing that the attorney general has talked about, that [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel has talked about, is that we protect victims, and so what we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story, to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected,” Blanche said. “Those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with all of the investigations into Mr. Epstein.”
The Epstein Files Act says the Justice Department “may withhold or redact” the identities of Epstein’s victims, and contains exemptions that would allow the DOJ to withhold records that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”
Blanche said “there’s a lot of eyes” looking over the documents to ensure victim identities have been redacted. The Justice Department in recent weeks has enlisted scores of attorneys from the National Security Division to conduct the review, according to sources familiar with the matter.
He further suggested in the interview that the administration’s review has been partially hamstrung by a ruling from a judge in the Southern District of New York that demanded the administration verify that its review is fully protecting the identities of victims.
When asked whether the American public should expect any additional criminal cases to come in the wake of the release of the files, Blanche said, “Look, as the president directed, it’s still being investigated, and I expect that will continue to happen. So we, as of today, there’s no new charges coming but, but we are investigating.”
President Donald Trump recently directed the Justice Department to investigate high-profile Democrats associated with Epstein, a task that Attorney General Pam Bondi then referred to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The Justice Department and FBI announced in July that they would be releasing no additional Epstein files, after several top officials — including Patel and outgoing FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino — had, prior to joining the administration, accused the government of shielding information regarding the Epstein case.
The Senate subsequently voted to approved the Epstein transparency bill passed by the House, after which President Donald Trump signed it into law.
Critics of Trump have speculated about the degree to which the president, who had a friendship with Epstein until they had a falling out around 2004, appears in the Epstein files, while Trump has accused several well-known Democrats of having ties to the disgraced financier.
“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!” Trump wrote on social media after signing the bill.
Epstein owned two private islands in the Virgin Islands and large properties in New York City, New Mexico and Palm Beach, Florida, where he came under investigation for allegedly luring minor girls to his seaside home for massages that turned sexual. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for sex crimes charges after reaching a controversial non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.
In 2019, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York indicted Epstein on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.
A huge dinosaur sits outside the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 26, 2016. (Raymond Boyd/Getty Images)
(PITTSBURGH) — The Carnegie Museum of Natural History has made the behind-the-scenes inventory of rare fossils and other ancient artifacts available for public viewing for the first time.
The exhibition, dubbed “The Stories We Keep,” features items from the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, museum’s inventory that are typically not displayed, chosen by the researchers and curators who work to preserve them.
Museum curators were inspired to create the exhibition in an effort to display items that wouldn’t otherwise be seen, Sarah Crawford, director of museum experience at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, told ABC News.
Museum staff cares for more than 22 million objects and specimens, less than 1% of which are on view at any given time, similar to other natural history museums around the country, Crawford said. The exhibition was designed in part by asking collection managers to choose objects and specimens to highlight.
“Every fossil, every animal and every object has a story that it can tell about our planet and the universe and our place in it,” Crawford said.
One of the most unique aspects of the exhibition is its Visible Collections display, which features a care lab in which visitors can watch as conservation staff work with fossils and other items in real time.
Guests even have the opportunity to speak with the scientists as they preserve and maintain the items, Crawford said.
When visitors walk in, the first thing they see behind the window is a 40-foot Egyptian funerary boat — the planks of which were all taken apart and individually restored, Crawford said.
Also within the Visible Collections are a cuneiform cylinder from King Nebuchadnezzar II that was made over 2,500 years ago, a fossilized bird feather that was found in Utah from about 48.5 million years ago and the lower jaw of a pygmy hippopotamus.
Currently on display within the Minerals and Earth Science Collection are toxic, radioactive specimens that could potentially kill people, as well as a meteorite that fell in Pennsylvania several years ago.
And a display named “Collecting So Many Bugs” features many of the museum’s 13 million invertebrate specimens, many of which are rare or from habitats that were previously lost.
Museums often do not have the space to display all of their items, or they are still in the process of being prepared and conserved, Crawford said.
The exhibition was unveiled in November and has since struck the curiosity and awe of new and repeat visitors alike.
“Because we have that visible lab, it means that the exhibition could be new every time you come,” Crawford said.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel speaks during the daily press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on November 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI said it “thwarted a potential” New Year’s Eve terror attack in North Carolina.
“The subject was directly inspired to act by ISIS,” the FBI said in a post on X.
“Thanks to our great partners for working with us and undoubtedly saving lives,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media.
Additional information was not immediately available. The FBI is expected to share more details at a news conference.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
