Colin Gray: Murder trial begins for father of alleged Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray
Winder, Georgia
—
Jurors heard emotional testimony and a harrowing 911 call on the first day of testimony in the trial of Colin Gray, who prosecutors say bears responsibility for the deadly 2024 shooting allegedly carried out by his son at the teen’s Georgia high school.
“There’s a shooting, there’s a shooting, there’s a shooting,” a breathless 14-year-old student told the 911 dispatcher, according to the recording played in court Monday, prompting tears from some victims’ family members seated in court. “What do we do? Please, he’s right behind the door.”
The 14-year-old made the call from inside the classroom of teacher Katherine Greer, who testified Monday that she saw the shooter, Colt Gray, standing outside her classroom door with a rifle.
“I said, ‘He’s got a gun,’ I told the kids to get in the corner,” Greer said on the stand as she began choking up.
Surveillance footage from inside Greer’s classroom showed students rushing into the corner of the room as Greer pressed an emergency button on her lanyard. She testified that she could hear gunshots outside the classroom door.
The testimony Monday is key to setting the foundation for the prosecution’s case, which alleges Colin Gray bought his son the AR15-style rifle allegedly used to kill two students and two teachers during the shooting at Apalachee High School in September 2024 – despite months earlier being told his son could be a threat to others.
Colin Gray has pleaded not guilty to nearly 30 charges, including two counts each of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. In his opening statement, defense attorney Brian Hobbs said his client was unaware that his son was allegedly planning the shooting.
“This is not a case about holding parents accountable for what their children do. That’s not what this case is about,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said in his opening statement Monday. “This case is about this defendant and his actions – his actions in allowing a child that he has custody over access to a firearm and ammunition after being warned that that child was going to harm others.”
The indictment alleges Gray allowed his teenage son access to a firearm and ammunition after receiving “sufficient warning” that his son would harm and endanger others, actions that constitute “criminal negligence” by “consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk.”
More than a year before the shooting, law enforcement had questioned the teen and his father about “online threats to commit a school shooting,” though no charges were filed, authorities said. Even so, Colin Gray bought a firearm for his son as a Christmas present in December 2023 – the same firearm he used in the mass shooting, according to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Video: Police interview Georgia shooting suspect back in 2023
Video: Police interview Georgia shooting suspect back in 2023
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“Seven months after he was told by Jackson County Sheriff’s Office of possible school shooter threats and being asked to restrict Colt’s access to guns, the defendant buys and gives 13-year-old Colt that SIG Sauer M400 as his Christmas present,” Smith said Monday.
Colin Gray’s trial is part of a broader push to hold more people accountable for a school shooting, including the shooter’s parents and responding law enforcement officers.
This case bears close similarities to the trials of James and Jennifer Crumbley, whose then-15-year-old son killed four students in 2021 at his high school in Oxford, Michigan. The Crumbley parents were each convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison. Their son was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Colin Gray has remained behind bars since his arrest a day after the shooting. If convicted, he faces 10 to 30 years in prison on each murder charge and 1 to 10 years on each manslaughter charge. The state has indicated it plans to seek testimony from members of Gray’s family, shooting survivors and behavioral health experts. The trial is expected to last about three weeks.
Colt Gray ultimately surrendered to police and has admitted to the shooting, according to authorities.
Now 16, Colt Gray has been indicted on 55 felony counts, including four counts of malice murder, according to court documents. He has pleaded not guilty, although a defense attorney last year raised the possibility he may change his plea. A trial date has not been set.
Colin Gray allowed his son to keep the gun in his room despite several warning signs that Colt Gray was beginning to “spiral out of control,” Smith said.
On Colt Gray’s first day at Apalachee High School in August 2024, he texted his father, “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands,” according to Smith. Later that week, Colt Gray shoved his mother to the ground when she tried to take the gun away and, separately, asked his father to buy him 150 rounds of ammunition, Smith said.
Defense attorney Hobbs told jurors that Colin Gray cannot be held criminally responsible.
“When someone conceals a plan, deceives the people around them, acts independently, the law does not allow us to pretend that the people left behind should’ve seen through all of it,” Hobbs said.
The defense, however, portrayed Colin Gray as an engaged father who was actively trying to get his son mental health treatment.
Colt Gray was initially planning the attack for February 2025 to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Parkland school shooting, Hobbs said. But the teen sped up the timeline because of his father’s efforts to get him treatment, the defense attorney said.
Colin Gray had set up an appointment for his son to meet with mental health specialists on September 5, 2024, the day after the shooting, according to Hobbs.
“The father was not ignoring the problem. Colin Gray was acting,” Hobbs said.
Opening statements were followed by witness testimony, beginning with several witnesses from the school system and members of local law enforcement who responded to the scene of the shooting.
Suzanne Harris, a former teacher at Apalachee High School, testified that Colt Gray asked her on the morning of the shooting if the school had done any active shooting drills.
“It was a little bit alarming, and I did send an email to the counselor in regards to that,” Harris testified.
The teacher said she noticed Colt Gray was carrying a backpack with a large poster sticking out of it that morning. In his opening statement, Smith said the teen had wrapped a posterboard around the part of the gun that wouldn’t fit in his bag when he brought it to school.
“I asked him what his project was about and he didn’t really have much to say about the project,” Harris testified. “But he did say he would show it to me later if I wanted to see it.”
Shortly after Colt Gray left her classroom, Harris found an administrator and told them she thought he had a gun.
“I felt in every fiber of my being that something was wrong,” she testified.
School officials visited Colt Gray’s next class to look for him, but by that time he had already left the room, Greer testified. When he returned to the classroom, he was holding the gun, she said.
Apalachee High School teacher Cassandra Ryan testified she heard a loud sound near the door of her classroom around 10:30 a.m. and immediately dropped to the ground.
“There was gunfire that started happening, and I could feel debris and bullets going over my head,” she said.
When the gunshots stopped, Ryan said she began tending to several of her students who had been shot. She wrapped a hoodie around one girl’s arm to try to stop the bleeding from her wound. “I could see the bone exposed,” Ryan said.
When law enforcement entered the classroom and turned on the lights roughly 20 minutes later, the students realized 14-year-old Christian Angulo had been killed near the doorway.
“They knew he wasn’t with us anymore, and so the students began to get really upset,” Ryan said through tears. “They had pronounced him dead, but we had to walk by him out the door.”
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith appeared to hold back tears as he testified about responding to the scene of the shooting and tending to victims, many of whom were children.
“Doing this 25 years, probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do is tell two sets of families that their babies were murdered,” Smith said.
One victim’s family tearfully clung to tissues as his photo was shown in the courtroom.
The mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, occurred the morning of September 4, 2024.
Colt left algebra class at 9:45 a.m., and gunshots were soon heard in a nearby classroom, a student told CNN at the time. The gun had been hidden in his backpack, authorities said.
The first report of an active shooter came in around 10:20 a.m., authorities said.
“I heard gunshots outside my classroom and people screaming, people begging not to get shot,” said then-14-year-old student Macey Right. “And then people sitting beside me (were) just shaking and crying.”
A resource officer confronted the shooter, who immediately surrendered and was taken into custody, said Smith, the sheriff. The suspect told investigators, “I did it,” while being questioned, according to Smith.
