WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A teenager who killed four people at a high school in the southern United States (US) state of Georgia with a gun his father gave him as a Christmas present was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday.

Colt Gray, 16, pleaded guilty to carrying out the September 2024 attack at Apalachee High School in the town of Winder.

Gray was 14 years old when he murdered two 14-year-old students and two teachers, while also wounding nine other people. He was charged as an adult.

Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm sentenced Gray to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“You were failed by each of your parents. You were failed by your extended family,” Primm said. “That failure does not absolve you from who you chose to idolise, worship, and become.

“You weren’t being bullied at Apalachee,” the judge said. “It wasn’t done out of hatred. You didn’t even know anyone at that school. It was done for the infamy of it.”

Gray’s father, Colin Gray, was convicted in March 2026 of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, in a rare case of a parent charged over a shooting carried out by their child.

Colin Gray bought his son the AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting for Christmas 2023 despite warnings that his son had threatened to carry out a school shooting.

School shootings are a shockingly regular occurrence in the United States, where guns outnumber people and regulations on purchasing even powerful military-style rifles are lax.

Parental responsibility in mass shootings has come increasingly under the spotlight in recent years.

The parents of a teenager who shot and killed four people at a Michigan high school in 2021 were convicted of manslaughter charges in 2024 and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison in an unprecedented and closely watched case.