A Barrow County grand jury indicted a father and son on murder charges Thursday in connection with the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder.
Colt Gray, 14, faces 55 counts, including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and cruelty to children. Colin Gray, his father, was indicted on 29 counts, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, and reckless conduct, AP reports.
Both Colin and Colt Gray are scheduled to appear for arraignment on November 21. Colin Gray is currently being held in the Barrow County jail, while Colt Gray, although charged as an adult is being held in a juvenile detention center in Gainesville.
Neither has sought bail, and AP reports their lawyers have declined comment.
Investigators testified Wednesday during a preliminary hearing for Colin Gray that Colt Gray brought a semiautomatic assault-style rifle onto the school bus that morning, hidden in a book bag and wrapped in poster board. Witnesses claim he left his second-period class, retrieved the rifle from a bathroom, then shot people in a classroom and hallways.
The shooting claimed the lives of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, as well as students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14. Another teacher and eight additional students were wounded, seven by gunfire.
Investigators say the teenager meticulously planned the shooting at the 1,900-student high school northeast of Atlanta. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified that the boy left a notebook in his classroom with step-by-step handwritten instructions to prepare for the shooting. The diagram showed his second-period classroom and his estimate of killing 26 and wounding 13 more, and he wrote that he’d be “surprised if I make it this far.”
It was revealed in court that there had long been signs that Colt Gray was troubled.
Colt and Colin Gray were interviewed about a May 2023 online threat connected to Colt Gray. Colt Gray denied making the threat then. Enrolling as a freshman at Apalachee after the academic year started, he skipped multiple days of school. Investigators reported that he had a “severe anxiety attack” on August 14. A counselor reported that he had suicidal thoughts, rocking and shaking uncontrollably in her office.
Marcee Gray, Colt’s mother who lived separately, told investigators that in August, she argued with Colin Gray about securing his guns and restricting Colt’s access to them. Instead, he bought the boy ammunition, a gun sight, and other shooting accessories, records show.
After Colt Gray asked his mother to put him in a “mental asylum,” the family arranged to take him on Aug. 31 to a mental health treatment center in Athens that offers inpatient treatment, but the plan fell apart when his parents argued about Colt’s access to guns the day before and his father said he didn’t have the gas money, an investigator said.
District Attorney Brad Smith argued that Colin Gray, who had primary custody of Colt, was aware of his son’s mental health issues and access to guns. “He had knowledge of Colt’s obsessions with school shooters,” Smith said. “He had knowledge of Colt’s deteriorating mental state. And he provided the firearms and the ammunition that Colt used in this.”
The indictment of Colin Gray follows a trend of holding parents accountable for their children’s actions in school shootings. Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021.
