ATLANTA (AP) — The father of accused school shooter Colt Gray testified Friday that he gave his son the rifle that was used in the attack as a Christmas present in hopes of bonding with the boy over hunting and outings at the gun range.
In one of the latest cases in which parents are being put on trial after their children are accused in fatal shootings, defense lawyers called Colin Gray to the witness stand. Prosecutors say he should be held accountable for giving his son the weapon used in the shooting as a Christmas gift despite alleged threats and warning signs that the boy was mentally unstable.
After the family had opened presents, Colin Gray said he walked down the hallway and told Colt, “I have one more thing for you.” He presented the gun, hoping it would encourage Colt to succeed in school.
“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.
Colt, who was 14 years old at the time of the shooting, faces 55 counts, including murder in the deaths of four people and 25 counts of aggravated assault. He’s accused of carefully planning the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at Apalachee High School that left two teachers and two students dead and several others wounded at the school in Winder, northeast of Atlanta.
The father faces 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The trial of Colin Gray, now ending its second week, has included testimony from the boy's mother, Marcee Gray, who testified that she urged her husband to lock up the guns so that Colt could not access them. But in the days before the school shooting, Colt kept the gun in his bedroom, witnesses have testified at his father's trial.
Colin Gray became emotional after being asked by his lawyer whether there were any “red flags” that would have made him believe his son would ever be capable of a school shooting.
“No, I struggle with it every day,” the father said, trying to hold back tears.
“He’s a good kid,” he added. “He wasn’t perfect, and nor was I. But to do something that heinous, like I don’t know of anybody that can ever see that kind of evil. Like the Colt I knew and the relationship I had — there’s this whole other side of Colt I didn’t know existed.”
The parents were separated for much of the time leading up to the shooting, and Marcee Gray was not charged with any crimes.
In dramatic testimony last week, several Georgia high school students testified in court about being shot during their algebra class. They recounted through tears seeing a classmate in a pool of blood, then seeing blood on their own bodies and fearing they might die.
There has also been testimony about what prosecutors describe as a “shrine” to a Florida school shooter that Colt kept on a wall next to his computer at home.
Colt had an interest in Nikolas Cruz, convicted of the 2018 shooting that left 14 students and three staff members dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Marcee Gray testified this week.
This is one of several cases around the nation where prosecutors are trying to hold parents responsible after their children are accused in fatal shootings.
District Attorney Brad Smith, left, points to a weapon that was displayed on the screen during the first day of the trial of Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, in the courtroom at the Barrow County courthouse, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, looks down as his attorney gives his opening statement in the courtroom at the Barrow County courthouse, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colin Gray, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, takes the stand during his trial on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Pool)
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan and Afghanistan exchanged cross-border attacks overnight in a dramatic escalation of tensions that led Pakistan’s defense minister to say on Friday that the two countries are in a state of “open war.”
Afghanistan launched an attack on Pakistan late Thursday, saying it was in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday. Pakistan then carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday, saying it targeted military installations.
Tensions have been high for months. Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
A Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting in October, but several rounds of peace talks in Turkey in November failed to produce a lasting agreement. The two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
Qatar once again appears to be mediating. Its minister of state, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi, spoke Friday with the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan in an effort to de-escalate tensions, Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted on X.
Afghanistan's attacks against Pakistani military targets was meant as "a message that our hands can reach their throats and that we will respond to every evil act of Pakistan,” Afghan government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said. “Pakistan has never sought to resolve problems through dialogue,” Mujahid said.
After the Afghan strikes, Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif posted on X: “Our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
Asif said Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2021 and expected the Taliban, which seized power in the country, to focus on the welfare of the Afghan people and regional stability.
Instead, he said the Taliban had turned Afghanistan “into a colony of India” — a reference to recently improving ties between India and Afghanistan, including offers of enhanced bilateral trade. Pakistan and neighboring India, both nuclear armed powers, have periodically engaged in wars, clashes and skirmishes since gaining independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Asif also accused Afghanistan of “exporting terrorism,” an allegation Pakistan frequently levies at its neighbor as militant violence in the country surges. Specifically, Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of supporting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, as well as outlawed Baloch separatist groups.
Pakistan accuses the TTP, which is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, of operating from inside Afghanistan. Both the group and Kabul deny that charge.
“Pakistan’s internal conflict is a purely domestic issue and is not a new one,” Mujahid said Friday, noting the TTP had been active for nearly two decades.
Pakistan has also frequently accused neighboring India of backing the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban, allegations New Delhi denies.
Afghanistan said its attack Thursday was in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday.
The governments have issued sharply differing casualty claims.
Pakistan's army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said Pakistani air and ground operations killed at least 274 members of Afghan forces and affiliated militants and wounded more than 400, while 12 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 27 others were wounded. One Pakistani soldier was missing in action.
Mujahid rejected the claims of the high number of Afghan casualties as “false.” He said 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed with the bodies of 23 of them taken to Afghanistan. He also said “many” Pakistani soldiers were captured. Thirteen Afghan soldiers had been killed, he said, and another 22 wounded, while 13 civilians were also wounded. A religious school in Paktika province was bombed on Friday morning, he added, saying information on potential casualties there was not yet available.
The claims of either side could not be independently verified.
Pakistan’s air force carried out airstrikes Friday night targeting military installations in Afghanistan’s Laghman province, two senior Pakistani security officials said. They said an arms depot and two key military installations were destroyed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.
Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Pakistan’s anti-drone systems shot down several small drones over the northwestern cities of Abbottabad, Swabi, and Nowshera Friday. He said they appeared to be part of a failed attack by the Pakistani Taliban, and there were no casualties. Tarar claimed the drone attacks “once again exposed direct linkages between the Afghan Taliban regime and terrorism in Pakistan.”
Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held separate phone calls with his Pakistani, Afghan, Qatari and Saudi counterparts on Friday to discuss the conflict, a Turkish official said, without providing details on the talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.
In October, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had facilitated talks between the sides.
On Friday, Mujahid said Afghanistan had “always emphasized a peaceful solution, and we still want to resolve the problem through dialogue.”
In a statement, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged both sides to try to resolve their differences through diplomacy, and to protect civilians.
Russia called for an immediate halt to the fighting and for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, Russian diplomat Zamir Kabulov told news agency RIA Novosti. Kabulov, who is President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan, said that Moscow would consider mediating between the two countries if asked, according to RIA Novosti.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi urged Pakistan and Afghanistan to resolve their differences through dialogue during the holy month of Ramadan. He also said that Tehran was ready to assist in facilitating dialogue.
Pakistani authorities said that dozens of Afghan refugees in the Torkham border area had been relocated to safer places.
Pakistan launched a sweeping crackdown in October 2023 to expel migrants without documents, urging those in the country to leave of their own accord to avoid arrest and forcibly expelling others. Iran also began a crackdown on migrants at around the same time.
Since then, millions have crossed the border into Afghanistan, including people who were born in Pakistan decades ago and had built lives and created businesses there.
In 2025, 2.9 million people returned to Afghanistan, the U.N. refugee agency has said, with nearly 80,000 having returned so far this year.
Abdul Qahar Afghan reported from Kabul, Afghanistan. Associated Press writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, Eduardo Castillo in Beijing, Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, also contributed to this story.
People read morning newspapers covering headline story about overnight cross border fighting between Pakistan and Afghan forces, at a stall in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)
Smoke rises after an explosion at a border post on the Afghan side of the Ghulam Khan crossing with Pakistan in Khost province, Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Saifullah Zahir)
Taliban fighters look up while manning an armed pickup truck at the Afghan side of the Ghulam Khan crossing with Pakistan in Khost province, Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Saifullah Zahir)
A man, who was injured in the overnight cross border fighting between Pakistan and Afghan forces, receives treatment at a hospital in Khar, in Bajaur, a district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering with Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Anwarullah Khan)
A villager looks at damaged solar plates and a portion following overnight cross border fighting between Pakistan and Afghan forces, at a village in Bajaur, a district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering with Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo)
Afghan Taliban soldiers gather on the Afghan side of the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Wahidullah Kakar)
Afghan Taliban soldiers walk along the main road on the Afghan side of the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Wahidullah Kakar)
Afghan Taliban soldiers look toward the Pakistani side, with one peering through the sight of his rifle, on the Afghan side of the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Wahidullah Kakar)
An Afghan Taliban soldier gives instructions to drivers on the Afghan side of the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Wahidullah Kakar)
Afghan Taliban soldiers stand on the Afghan side of the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Wahidullah Kakar)
