WINDER — Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray pleaded guilty Friday, almost two years after two of his classmates and two teachers were fatally gunned down on the Barrow County campus.
Gray, 14 at the time of the shooting on Sept. 4, 2024, previously pleaded not guilty to 55 felony charges, including malice murder, aggravated assault and cruelty to children.
There were 25 victims total, including 15 children who were inside a classroom when Gray fired shots inside the room, according to his indictment. It shows at least eight people were shot, including the four who died, as well as three children who were wounded.
The 16-year-old’s guilty plea cancels a trial in the case, scheduled to begin in October at a courthouse in Columbia County near Augusta.
Dozens of community members, including some relatives of the victims, packed the courtroom of Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm for the emotional plea hearing Friday.
Primm asked Gray if he were pleading guilty to the indictment.
“Yes, your honor,” he responded, standing alongside his attorney, Charlton Allen.
Responding to additional questions from the judge, Gray said he is taking medication for mental health issues but feels able to enter a guilty plea to all 55 charges. The teenager said he understands the minimum sentence he will receive is life in prison with the possibility of parole. The maximum sentence is life without parole.
He won’t learn his fate until next week. The judge paused Friday’s hearing in the late afternoon following hours of statements from victims and an investigator’s detailed account of what led up to and happened the day of the attack. The sentencing hearing will resume Monday.
Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14-year-old students, and teachers Ana Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall were killed in the shooting.
‘Our lives were changed forever’
Shayna Aspinwall, the wife of Richard Aspinwall, told the court Friday their daughters, ages 5 and 2 at the time of the shooting, must grow up without their father. She and some other relatives of the victims asked the judge to sentence Colt Gray to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“Every holiday, birthday, anniversary and ordinary day is a reminder of what has been stolen from us,” Shayna Aspinwall said, adding that her husband “brought kindness, laughter and strength into our lives.”
“The dreams we shared ended the moment his life was taken,” she said. “Our lives were changed forever.”
Gray has been in custody since the shooting, housed at the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center.
The teen’s father, Colin Gray, is separately scheduled to be sentenced in Barrow County next week after being found guilty in March of second-degree murder and other charges tied to the school shooting. He gave his son the gun used in the shooting, prosecutors said.
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Colin Gray is the first Georgia parent criminally charged in association with a mass school shooting that their child is accused of committing. His prosecution is believed to be the second of its kind nationally, after the parents of a Michigan school shooter were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced in 2024 to at least 10 years in prison.
Colt Gray was a bit of a loner who had been bullied at school since the seventh grade and suffered from anxiety, his father told GBI agents.
Breanna Schermerhorn, the mother of Mason, was the first of the victims’ family members to speak in court Friday. She said she does not forgive the teen, though she understands he did not receive the “support, boundaries and accountability that every child needs and deserves.”
She said the people who should have recognized warning signs and intervened before the shooting failed to do so.
“I can acknowledge that he was failed without excusing what he did,” she said. “I have no doubt in my mind that if Colt had actually attended school as he should have, Mason would have befriended him.”
Inside school, terror as shooting unfolded
An Apalachee High student shot by Colt Gray told the judge she needed lifesaving surgery and was in and out of the hospital for three to four months. The student is still a minor, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not naming the minor victims.
The student said that, on the day of the shooting, she saw Colt Gray with a gun and watched her teacher drop to the floor after the first shot was fired.
She said she also dropped to the ground and was terrified when she realized she had been shot.
“I remember telling my friends to call my brother to tell him I was shot, and I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” she said.
The student said she was told she might not be able to walk again, but she is recovering with extensive physical therapy.
“After the shooting, I struggled with so much anxiety and I felt like my life was over,” she said. “Moving on from this experience has been very hard. I hope my story makes Colt realize all the horrible things he’s done, and all the pain and suffering he’s caused.”
Jason Smith, an investigator with the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office, testified that Colt Gray prepared inside a school bathroom stall shortly before 10:30 a.m. on the day of the shooting.
The teen then tried to enter his second period classroom but couldn’t get inside, so he went into another classroom, Smith said. He said that’s where Colt Gray shot Christian Angulo, before shooting others in nearby areas.
Smith said he first interviewed Colt Gray about 30 minutes after the shooting. He said Colt Gray said at the time the shooting was a spontaneous, “last-minute thing” he decided to do on the way to seeking help from a school counselor.
But evidence showed the teen had been planning the attack for some time, Smith said. The teen had a black notebook with him at school that day, and it contained writing and drawings detailing his plans.
“Don’t shoot anyone in the bathroom, you will alert people,” Colt Gray wrote in the notebook, Smith said.
The teen also wrote that more than a dozen people would be killed and others injured, along with the word “why” more than 100 times, as well as “I can’t wait” multiple times, Smith said.
Colt Gray told Smith he shot at random.
An audio recording of Smith’s initial interview with the teen, lasting more than an hour, was played in court Friday. In the interview, the crying teen described the shooting as “horrible” and said he had thought about killing himself.
Asked by Smith what led to the shooting, Colt Gray said he’d been hearing voices and experiencing impulses, among other things.
“I’m really unwell,” he told the investigator.
The teen told the investigator he’d been attending Apalachee High for about a month and hadn’t made friends with any students, who scared him. He said he felt immediately before the shooting that he might be attacked.
In the interview, Colt Gray said he’d told his father to hide the guns in the house a few days before the shooting. He said his father had ordered a gun safe and scheduled a counseling appointment, but it was too late.
At the end of the interview, Smith asked the teen if he had a message for his father.
“Tell him that it wasn’t his fault,” Colt Gray responded.
High school principal, Jessica Rehberg, told the judge Colt Gray deserves the harshest consequences for his “cruel actions.” She said the community will take years to recover.
”He destroyed what once felt like the most safe and secure place," she said. “He ripped a community of its pride. Now, a balloon pop is triggering.”
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