State authorities have announced that the father of the suspect accused of killing four and wounding nine more at a metro Atlanta high school has been arrested for his part in providing weapons for the suspect to use. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday evening that it had arrested Colin Gray, the shooter’s father, in connection with Wednesday’s attack on Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia. The move has a recent legal precedent: Prosecutors have previously convicted the parents of a school shooter who attacked a high school in Oxford, Michigan.
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Full story: https://www.chalkboardnews.com/issues/safety/article_9ab681ce-6c60-11ef-81f1-ff19d7adc7e8.html
[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Education in Focus. I'm your host, Eliana Cardotl. Georgia State authorities have announced that the father of the suspect accused of killing four and wounding nine more at a metro Atlanta high school has been arrested for his part in providing weapons for the suspect to use. Joining me to dig into this is chalkboard news editor Brennan Clary. Brennan, what do we know about these charges and the role of the father in this case? Yeah, so what we know is that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has arrested the shooter's father, Colin Gray, in connection with the attack on Appalachian High School in Baro County, Georgia last week. And this is like kind of a note point of order at chalkboard. We don't use the school shooter's names in an effort to reduce notoriety. We don't want to give them any more airtime. We don't want to give them anything. And that's in hopes that we're not propping them up and giving them a platform for ideological issues or whatever like that. And in hopes of reducing future people who, unfortunately, may be interested in this from getting any exposure as well. So just in an effort to do that and have a moral responsibility to do that, we feel like at chalkboard news. But anyway, with that out of the way, essentially, yeah, the state authorities were saying that he's been arrested in connection with the shooting with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of second degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. So those are the legal charges. That doesn't mean he's guilty. That means he stands accused of those things. And so these are all what we have to be careful in journalism to use a alleged and suspect until a court of law has determined that is the case. So that's why we use shooting suspect and that the father is charged with these things. But that's essentially the backstory there is that for the father's part in providing the weapon that he is being charged for that. So the GPI released a statement on Thursday that he knowingly allowed his son to have the weapon. So that is a, I think really what it comes down to is can they prove that the father through negligence or intentionally allowed this to happen? So that's essentially what the charges are focused on. - And there is legal precedent for a case like this for parents to be charged. What's kind of the background there? - Yeah, absolutely. So this has recent legal presence. I mean, as of this year, the school tutor in Oxford, Michigan, his parents were charged by the Oakland County prosecutor and they were successful in proving that the parents were criminally responsible for the high school shooter getting access to weapons and not stopping what happened from taking place. Like they were in a position to do that. And so it is a recent, that's the first time that parents have been prosecuted for their children carrying this out. So I think that the intention there is to obviously have justice for the families of these victims, of these students who are killed. But it's also, I think, an idea that if you are, if you have weapons in your home and your student has access to them and then tries to do something, then you can be held criminally liable. So that is something that I think in a case-to-case, it might be a little bit different, but there is legal precedent there and it has worked before and it might be something that continues to become in play and play out in different courts. Unfortunately, as this continues to happen, I think it might be something that we're seeing prosecutors using authorities using to charge parents of school shooters. - What else did the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director have to say about this case in the press conference that they held? - Yeah, they said they're continuing to look for that and at the time to be, we're getting a lot of copycat reports. So that's something that unfortunately happens after school shooting is that you have people maliciously calling schools and saying, I'm gonna do something and calling it a lot of threats. So it's sort of adding a lot of upheaval to a time when there's so much upheaval and the police are investigating the specifics there, but basically you can't not respond to threats if they're being made against the school. So they're continuing to investigate those things as well. So I think that those kind of the main things, they're continuing to look into all these different details and there's more information about the mother potentially having some information a little bit before the school shooter started opening fire. And so there's just more information coming to light and I think we'll have a clearer picture in the coming days about what happened and sort of the different kinds of motivations or potential security failures that could have happened. - Well, this terrible tragic event comes as students across the country are returning to school. You talked to an advocate for parents and children about the impacts of a shooting like this for families everywhere. Who did you talk to and what did she have to say? - Yeah, I talked to Lisa Pianberlin, who's the CEO of Parents Anonymous, which is an organization that support parents and their children with resources and expert help. And she basically said, you know, I've been helping families for a long time. She told me and that really when it comes to school shootings like these are very difficult situations and kids might have a lot of feelings but she really said parents might have a lot of feelings first and that you need to address those and be calm before you try to discuss that with your child. So, you know, if you have to go into the bathroom and scream and cry, do that and then go talk to your kids instead of having sort of an emotional interaction with them because you're the adult, you have to be in control. And then you can hear them and listen to them and tell them that you love them and that they're safe because they are. She said, you know, you don't know the future but in that moment they're with you and they are safe. And I think that, you know, it is unfortunately when you look at these kinds of instances, you find that there's so much unpredictability in life and beyond Berlin said that, you know, unfortunately, you know, there could be a traffic incident next week, like we're not sure about our lives and it's kind of hard to talk about that anyway with children, you're kind of facing mortality but essentially, you know, being able to listen to them and try to explain things to them at different levels that are age appropriate. If you have two kids and one of them is, you know, four and another one is 12. It's gonna be different conversations, right? About what that looks like and what's going on in the news. And so I think she just said that is very, very important to kind of, you know, decide where your children are developmentally and have an appropriate conversation with them or just, you know, separate them. And also to be watchful, to be thinking about, you know, are they not eating because of the anxiety? And I think that this is probably, you know, much more likely in the school districts around where the shooting happened, right? Where things are, you know, maybe there were threats called in and I mean, this is a nationwide thing as well but, you know, in those specific instances, it is good, beyond Berlin said, just to keep an eye out and to have those kind of conversations and to be noticeable, like to be noticing those physical, you know, symptoms but that can be an underlying, you know, emotional issue as well that maybe your kid's not talking to you about something but they're saying that they have a stomach ache and they can't go to school today so that, for example, would maybe be okay, well, we actually have to deal with the underlying thing is that you're afraid to go to school because of what you've heard and so let's talk about that and try to figure that out. - Well, Brendan, thank you for your insights on these stories. Listeners can keep up with these stories and more at chalkboardnews.com. (upbeat music) (bright music) (upbeat music)
