5 things to know about Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Thursday, September 05, 2024

3. Colt Gray was known as a 'quiet' student at Apalachee High School

Lyela Sayarath, a junior at Apalachee High School, described Colt Gray to CNN as “quiet,” and said she wasn’t surprised that he would launch such an attack on the school. She said he habitually skipped classes or school entirely.

“He never really talked. He was pretty quiet,” she said. “He wasn’t there most times either. He just didn’t come to school, or he just would skip class. But even when he would’ve talked, it was one-word answers and short statements.”

Sayarath said shortly before the shooting on Wednesday morning that Colt Gray had been sitting beside her in their algebra I class. She said he left the classroom and then came back a short while later with a gun. She said because the classroom doors automatically closes when people exit, they have to be let into the classroom by someone who is already inside. She said their teacher saw that he was trying to re-enter the class with a gun and they never allowed him back inside so he turned to another class.

He “turned to the classroom that would have been to my right, and he just starts to shoot, and you hear about 10 to 15 rounds back-to-back,” Sayarath said. “When we heard it, most people just dropped to the floor and kind of crawled in an area, like, piled on top of each other. The teacher turned off the lights, but we all just kind of piled together, and I pushed desks in front of us. I was just telling people, ‘Push desks in front of you, block in front of you, get low’ — things like that.”