On September 4, 2024, a school shooting occurred at Apalachee High School near Winder, Georgia, United States. The perpetrator, 14-year-old Colt Gray, killed four people—two students and two teachers—and injured nine others; seven by gunfire, and two indirectly. It is the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history.
Colt grew up with violent parents and suffered child abuse and neglect. He interacted with multiple Georgia child welfare workers, four school systems, three county sheriff's departments, and two local police agencies, with many of them ignoring or not responding to reported child abuse. He was motivated by a desire for notoriety and his obsession with Nikolas Cruz, the perpetrator of the Parkland high school shooting. He was a member of the True Crime Community and was subject to a previous police investigation in May 2023. Colt's father, Colin Gray, bought a rifle for his son despite his knowledge of the previous police investigation regarding alleged school shooting threats made by him, as well as his own history of mental health crises.
Colt Gray was taken into police custody and charged with four counts of felony murder. On March 3, 2026, Colin was convicted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in relation to the shooting and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. On July 24, 2026, Colt pleaded guilty to all of the charges and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Background
Apalachee High School is a public high school located in Barrow County, Georgia, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Atlanta. It is part of the Barrow County School District and had around 1,900 students enrolled at the time. All schools in the state of Georgia are legally required to complete at least one active shooter drill annually by October 1.
Georgia has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the United States. The sale of semi-automatic rifles is legal in the state. A background check is required for purchase from a licensed dealer. Georgia also has no child access prevention law or red flag law. However, carrying a firearm into a government building or school is illegal under state law.
Roughly one week before the shooting, teachers at the school were issued a form of identification with a panic button that can be pressed during any "active situation". Classroom doors at the school also lock automatically once shut and require opening from the inside if someone entering does not have a key.
Shooting
On the morning of the shooting, a call was made to Apalachee High School threatening to target five schools, of which Apalachee would be the first. The source of the threat was never determined.
During his first period class, Colt Gray asked his teacher how the school would respond to an active shooter. The teacher additionally noticed his backpack was "unusually heavy". The teacher reported these concerns to administrators and other school staff via email. Gray's second period algebra teacher, in whose class the shooting would later begin, was not informed about the email from his first period teacher.
At 9:42 a.m., Colt Gray texted his father Colin Gray, "I'm sorry, it's not ur fault ... ur not to blame for any of it. [sic]". Upon receiving Colt's texts, Colin called Colt's maternal grandmother, who was with Colt's mother at the time.
Sometime after the second period algebra began at 9:45 a.m., Colt Gray left the classroom after requesting and obtaining a pass to see the school counselor. Around that same time, a different student in the class with the surname Gray and a similar first name also asked for permission to leave. Both Colt and the similarly-named student headed towards the same bathroom. Colt Gray left a notebook behind when he exited the classroom, which was recovered after the shooting.
At 9:50 a.m., Colt's mother called the school, warning of an "extreme emergency", and urged the school counselor to check in on her son. The school counselor told her that Colt had talked about a school shooting that morning.
School resource officers, alerted to Colt Gray's comments during his first period class, began looking for him. They found the bathroom Colt was hiding in, but incorrectly escorted the similarly-named student to the front office instead. While Colt continued to hide in one of the bathroom stalls, school staff continued to search for him for twenty minutes.
Colt Gray exited the bathroom wearing yellow gloves, carrying a backpack and holding a white posterboard around his torso. A rolled-up poster, poster tube, or posterboard was used by Colt Gray that morning to conceal his rifle, which he carried in his backpack.
At 10:02 a.m., Colt Gray texted his mother, "I'm sorry". At 10:18 am, she texted Colin Gray, suggesting he leave work and saying: "They're going to need you at the school".
Gray knocked on the door to his algebra classroom, presumably to reenter, and a student got up to open it. Before the student opened the door, she looked at its glass panel, through which she saw Gray holding a gun. She moved out of the way from the door and did not open it. When asked to open the door, she told the teacher "he has a gun". The shooter then entered a nearby classroom and fired between 10 and 15 rounds inside for seven seconds, striking multiple people and killing student Christian Angulo. The shooter then ran off, firing down the hall at those exiting rooms or bathrooms, but did not attempt to enter any classrooms with closed doors.
Shortly after the initial shots were fired, multiple staff members pushed the panic buttons on their identification, which triggered a lockdown and alerted authorities, including three school resource officers, regarding the shooting. The school was placed in lockdown at around 10:20 a.m. The lockdown software caused all interactive whiteboards in the school to flash the words "Hard Lockdown" in large red letters. The ambiguous wording of this message made some students think it was part of a drill.
A class of health students barricaded their classroom's doors with chairs and desks after seeing the "Hard Lockdown" message. A geometry teacher in a separate classroom flipped their desk over to barricade its door. Other students began hiding in their classrooms.
A junior at the school stated that his chemistry teacher attempted to investigate the ongoing situation, before being directed to lock the classroom door by another teacher warning of an active shooter. After the chemistry teacher locked the door, his students ran to the back of the room. An unknown person then began to knock on the door and shouted to "open up". Once the knocking stopped, gunshots and screams were heard.
Math teacher and assistant football coach Richard Aspinwall exited his classroom and went into the hallway to investigate a commotion and was shot in the chest. Aspinwall's students pulled him back into the classroom and used their shirts to stanch his bleeding, while also closing and barricading the door. He did not survive his injuries.
The director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation stated that the local sheriff's office received calls about an active shooter at the school around the same time as the lockdown began. The school resource officers engaged Gray within minutes, and he ultimately surrendered to them. Gray had brought 103 bullets with him into the school, 36 of which were discharged during the shooting.
Students were evacuated from the school building to an outdoor football field after no further threat was found. Students later recounted seeing abandoned book bags, phones, and shoes on the floor during the evacuation, while others recounted seeing police attempting to block a body on the ground, a gun, and blood. Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp directed all available state resources to assist at the scene of the shooting.
Victims
Four people were killed: students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both aged 14; math teacher Cristina Irimie, 53; and math teacher and assistant football coach Richard Aspinwall, 39. One teacher and eight students were injured in the shooting, seven of which suffered gunshot wounds. The injured were treated at Piedmont Athens Regional Hospital in Athens and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Several patients were also admitted to hospitals due to panic attacks.
Perpetrator
Colt Gray was the perpetrator of the shooting. He was arrested and charged with four counts of felony murder. Prosecutors tried Gray as an adult. He used a semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle in the shooting.
Following the shooting, the perpetrator's father, Colin Gray (born August 10, 1970) was charged and later convicted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. A jury determined that Colin's decision to provide his son Colt with an AR-15-style rifle constituted criminal negligence and felony child cruelty, as he did so despite a police investigation into Colt for school shooting threats and Colt's documented mental health history. The verdict is considered a significant legal precedent for parental accountability, as it successfully utilized a state's second-degree murder statute to link a parent's underlying "criminal negligence" in child-rearing directly to the deaths of third parties.
Prior investigations and concerns of violence
In May 2023, anonymous tips were received by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s National Threat Operations Center concerning an account on the instant messaging service Discord. The person behind the account sent messages stating their intent to commit a school shooting, as well as a photo of a rifle and shotgun. The username of the Discord account was "Ланца", a Russian transliteration of "Lanza", the surname of the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Discord banned the account on May 21, 2023, and forwarded relevant information on it to law enforcement.
The FBI traced the account's email to Colt Gray, then aged 13, and the location of the messages was traced to the state of Georgia. The FBI contacted the Jackson County sheriff's office, who sent a deputy and a patrolman to the Gray family home, then located in Jefferson.
When questioned, Colt Gray denied making any such threats. The deputy told Gray he had to take him at his word. Colt also stated during the investigation that he deleted his Discord account multiple months prior, claiming it was consistently being hacked. Neither Colt, nor his father, Colin Gray, recognized the email address that the FBI had traced to Colt.
Colin Gray acknowledged that he owned unloaded guns and provided his son access to them, but also said that Colt's access to the guns was not "unfettered".
The sheriff's deputy who responded to the house had not seen screenshots of the messages or images of the guns. The relevant evidence was stored in an email attachment that the deputy did not know how to open on his phone.
The deputy later expressed confusion to Colin Gray over the tip and ultimately closed the case. The Jackson County sheriff's office told the FBI they would alert area schools about the case and monitor Colt's behavior, but after the shooting, no evidence was found suggesting such a notification had been sent.
In a statement issued after the shooting, the FBI said, "At the time, there was no probable cause for an arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state or federal levels."
In late August 2024, Gray mentioned Nikolas Cruz, the perpetrator of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, to his maternal grandmother. She did not know who Cruz was; Gray then explained the shooting to her. Gray would also reference other school shootings, including the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the Columbine High School massacre, in conversations with his mother.
Gray also had "a shrine of sorts" in his room, which included numerous pictures of, and newspaper clippings about, various school shooters on the wall behind his computer, including pictures of Cruz.
Abuse and home environment
According to Gray's lawyers, his household was at one point visited by the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services. According to The Washington Post, for the three years before the shooting, Gray and his family interacted with multiple Georgia child welfare workers, four school systems, three county sheriff's departments, and two local police agencies, with many of them ignoring or not responding to reported child abuse Gray was allegedly experiencing at the hands of his parents.
In August 2021, Gray allegedly searched the internet for ideas on how to murder his father, with the search being flagged since it was made from a school device. Two school resource officers showed up at Gray's home to talk with him and his mother. The Ben Hill County School District, where the incident occurred, said that they could not find an incident report of the event. Gray's maternal grandfather told CNN that Gray's father had multiple episodes where he attempted or purposely beat Gray, adding that Gray did not show any outward anger issues but was affected by his upbringing.