WINDER, Ga. – Lifelong Winder resident John George was about 14 years old when he was first given a gun to hunt – the same age as the suspect charged with gunning down four people at Apalachee High School on Wednesday.

George remembers his father imposed strict rules about when and how he could use a deadly weapon at that age. And when George became a father himself, he said he was the same way with his three children, all of whom own guns as adults.

As a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, George was skeptical when he heard that both the teenager and his father had been charged with murder and other crimes in connection with the attack in the city more than 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. But he, like many other parents in the community, came to believe the state’s historic prosecution is justified after learning that Colin Gray was accused of giving his son access to an “AR-platform style weapon” knowing the teen had been struggling. Prior to the shooting, Gray told authorities investigating a tip about threats “to shoot up a school” that his son had been bullied at school and was upset by his parents’ recent divorce.

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“I’m a very responsible gun owner myself, and I do know what it means, and everyone should be,” George said. “If you’re going to own a gun, you should be responsible with it and be responsible for it, not put it in the hands of kids.”

As Winder, a tight-knit, community of less than 30,000, came together on a rainy Friday evening to grieve the loss of two teachers and two students, parents expressed value for Second Amendment rights, safe gun ownership and parental responsibility, but a consensus emerged among mourners who spoke to USA TODAY: The suspect should not have had access to a gun.

Tragedy strikes a close-knit community

The texts from Jose Solis’ 15-year-old daughter, Kristina, said, “There’s an active shooter. I love you.”

The sophomore at Apalachee High School sent the frantic message from the classroom next to where the shooter opened fire. Witnesses have told reporters the younger Gray slipped out of math class and returned with an automatic weapon.

As Kristina was evacuated from the building, she noticed a puddle of blood in the hallway, Solis, 42, told USA TODAY during a candlelight vigil at Winder’s Jug Tavern Park Friday night.

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“Somebody had dragged their bloody hands on the lockers,” he said.

“It breaks your heart,” Solis said. “You’re incapable of doing anything because you’re so far away.”

As shots rang out, Denis Barlov’s son Amar, an eleventh grader at Apalachee, called his mom to say I love you. He texted his parents saying, “I don’t wanna die” and “Im shaking.”

In just six minutes, four people were dead, according to U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican who represents Georgia’s 10th congressional district, which includes Winder.

Mason Schermerhorn, Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, were gone.

More: ‘Great’ dad. ‘Caring’ brother. Families mourn Georgia high school shooting victims.

Barlov, a soccer coach at Apalachee, coached Christian. He said he often spent more time with the team than his own family, and when he saw the 14-year-old’s picture released as one of the victims, his blood pressure shot up.

“I hate it,” he said. “I just can’t get over it.”

Nine others were injured in the chaos. Teachers used new wearable panic buttons to alert law enforcement, a move Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said prevented an even worse tragedy.

Now, Solis struggles to let his daughter out of his sight in Winder, which is dotted with blue and yellow memorials, flowers, balloons and signs honoring the victims. His wife works at a different school in the district, which closed all its schools for the rest of the week, so she stayed home with Kristina. “If that had not been the case, I wouldn’t be at work. I would be watching my daughter, making sure she’s OK,” he said.

“You were supposed to be comfortable sending your kid to school, not thinking that something like this was going to happen,” Solis added.

Barlov chose to move his family to Winder because he thought it was the safest out of four towns he was considering.

But now, he feels that the uniquely American danger is nationwide.

“If you look at any country in the world, there’s no school shooters,” Barlov said. “It’s only right here.”

Who’s to blame?

The traumatic moments some Winder parents lived through as they waited to hear their children were safe have stirred a deep anger at the boy’s father, Colin Gray, 54. As a gun owner, Barlov would never expose his kids to his weapons, he said.

“You knew what this kid was capable to do,” said Barlov, 42.

Gray, who appeared briefly in court Friday in front of more than a dozen family members and victims, faces two counts of murder in the second degree, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts of cruelty to children in the second degree, under a relatively new Georgia law that lets prosecutors charge adults for allowing minors to suffer “cruel or excessive physical or mental pain.”

This marks only the second time in the U.S. that parents of an accused mass school shooter have been charged for deaths. The charges come months after the conviction of Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of a 15-year-old who shot and killed four of his classmates at his Michigan high school, a first-of-its-kind prosecution that captured national attention and set a precedent for holding parents and guardians legally responsible for the violent actions of their children. 

Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, previously told USA TODAY that the case involving the Crumbleys shows that “parents can – and should – be held responsible when they disregard public safety.”

“The fact that Mr. Gray bought his son a weapon of war as a present – months after being investigated for making threats to shoot up a school – is a complete and utter dereliction of responsibility, both as a gun owner and a community member,” said Suplina, adding that the verdict against the Crumbleys “should have sent a clear message to people like Mr. Gray.”

Solis said he hopes law enforcement “does what they have to do.” In the meantime, Winder faces a long road to mourn and rebuild, he said. “We will definitely recover, but it won’t be easy.”

‘He was responsible for him’

Among the sea of families gathered for Friday’s vigil miles away from the courthouse where Gray and his son appeared earlier that day, many said that being a parent, like gun ownership, is a grave responsibility. If someone fails to take that seriously, they should face the consequences.

Antonio and LLasbet Montes, who have two kids at Apalachee and one at the middle school next door, said they’re heartbroken for the shooting victims’ families and larger school community. They can understand why the suspect’s father is charged in the shooting.

”Us, as parents, are responsible for the actions of our kids, I mean at least until they become adults,” Antonio said.

“He should be responsible for his (son’s) actions,” Llasbet echoed. “He was responsible for him.”

More: Why an ominous warning didn’t stop Georgia school shooting

As for gun access, Antonio added, “Not everyone should own a gun, especially underage kids. I’m not against guns. It’s just that they should have better control of guns.”

Stanley Olds, a parent to a child at Winder Elementary School, said he believes that Colin Gray was aware that his son had a problem but ignored it.

“He knew, and still fed into it,” Olds said. “I think it’s rightful that he’s charged.”

Standing at the vigil with his family, Olds said, “The eight [cruelty to children] counts is less than it could be. He endangered 1,900 kids that were in the high school that day. Four people died, but it could have been a lot worse.” 

Dion Muldrow has served as the band director at Apalachee High School for the last five years and been an educator for two decades. Muldrow has children of his own at the neighboring middle school. He too says he understands why Gray is facing charges along with his son. 

“Our kids are our responsibilities,” Muldrow said. “If one of my children smarts off to a teacher, it’s my responsibility to address that.” 

‘They failed that kid’

Many in the community are equally angry at a system that let the suspect slip through the cracks.

In May of 2023, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center picked up anonymous tips about online threats containing images of guns to commit a school shooting from an unidentified location. The FBI determined that the posts originated in Jackson County and turned over the evidence to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, which interviewed the suspected shooter and his father, who said that he had hunting guns in the house but his son did not have unrestricted access to them.

There was no probable cause at the time for an arrest or additional law enforcement action, officials said on social media. So the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office passed on information to local schools.

Barlov struggles to understand how law enforcement and school officials failed to pick up on issues in the Gray household and prevent the shooting.

“Honestly, this could be prevented if the FBI and Jackson County did their job,” he said.

Relatives of the suspect have said the teen struggled with his mental health in the face of a tumultuous home environment. 

More: Colt Gray, 14, identified as suspect in Apalachee High School shooting: What we know

His grandfather, Charles Polhamus, accused Colin Gray of being verbally abusive to the suspect and his mother in an interview with CNN. His aunt, Annie Brown, told the Washington Post the younger Gray “was begging for help from everybody around him,” and his grandmother had gone to the school to ask for help from the counselor.

The suspect’s mother, Marcee Gray, told Brown she notified the school counselor the morning of the shooting that there was an “extreme emergency” and her son needed to be found, according to text messages and phone records obtained by the Post. Brown and Polhamus both declined to comment, and Gray did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.

“They failed that kid,” Barlov said. “That kid should have received help when he asked for help.”

Robin M. Kowalski, a psychology professor at Clemson University in South Carolina who has studied shootings at K-12 schools and colleges and other mass killings, stressed that teachers, classmates, law enforcement and parents all have a role to play in identifying the warning signs that a young person is at risk of committing violence. 

“The burden of it doesn’t fall on just one person,” she said.

Where to draw the line between parent and child? 

Though the Georgia shooting bears eerie similarities to the Crumbley case, if Gray goes to trial, the outcome could differ dramatically, given the social and cultural differences between the two communities, according to Ekow N. Yankah, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Michigan. He pointed to a civil case in Texas last month where a jury declined to find the parents of a 17-year-old gunman who killed eight of his classmates and two teachers at Santa Fe High School in 2018 legally liable for their son’s actions.

Though many in the community said it’s clear the suspected shooter shouldn’t have had access to guns, Gray told investigators that his son was being ridiculed “day after day after day” and he was “trying to teach him about firearms and safety” to get him interested in the outdoors and away from video games, according to a transcript of the conversation. The father described a photo from a recent hunting trip of his son with blood on his cheeks after shooting his first deer, calling it “the greatest day ever.”

In 2023, Colin Gray told investigators that, although he had rifles in the house for hunting, his son did not have “unfettered access” to them, according to a report from law enforcement obtained by USA TODAY. 

“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do and how to use them and not use them,” Colin Gray said.

Yankah said this doesn’t excuse the father’s actions. But he said there are many parental decisions that in one community may “seem totally outrageous, but in other communities, is totally normal, like taking your kid hunting and teaching him about guns.”

Still, Yankah worries the precedent set by convicting parents of mass shooters could lead to prosecutorial overreach. He questions whether a parent could later be prosecuted for failing to secure their car keys if their child injures someone while driving under the influence. “There comes a point where a parent should be able to say, ‘I’ve done everything I can, but this child’s actions are theirs and not mine.’ And where that line is is awfully hard to know,” he said.

And Yankah said the criminal justice system can’t be used to solve the underlying social problems that lead to mass violence.

“It’s clear that what we have is a problem with guns and gun regulation and the idea that we can prosecute our way out of it one parent at a time strikes me as just depressing and doomed to failure,” he said.

Back in Winder, at the town’s vigil, Muldrow called charging Gray’s father the right thing to do, even if it’s difficult. 

“I feel like justice was served,” he said. “Law enforcement and the courts are doing what they feel is best. And so I trust the system, and I trust their decisions.”

As Muldrow spoke with USA TODAY at the vigil, at least a dozen students rushed over to hug him.

“I got to see a lot of my kids tonight,” Muldrow said. “Seeing this sense of community is uplifting. And it shows us that we’re going to be able to get through this.”

Contributing: Ryne Dennis, Jeanine Santucci, Trevor Hughes, Christopher Cann, and Wayne Ford, USA TODAY