Colin Gray, father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray, is arrested and charged
Colin Gray, the father of the 14-year-old Colt Gray charged in the Apalachee High School shooting, has been arrested and charged in connection with the actions of his son.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced at a press conference Thursday that Colin Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
"These charges stem from Mr. Gray knowingly allowing his son Colt to possess a weapon," GBI Director Chris Hosey said.
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Law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News that Colin Gray bought his son an AR-15 style rifle as a gift in December 2023, months after he told Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that his son did not have unsupervised access to guns as they investigated a school shooting threat.
An earlier statement from the FBI Atlanta Division said in May 2023, the FBI's National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and the threats included photographs of guns.
The then-13-year-old Colt Gray was interviewed along with his father, who told officials that he had hunting guns in his house, but his son didn't have unsupervised access to them. Colt Gray, who wasn't identified by name in the statement, also denied making the threats, and no charges were filed in that investigation.
On Friday, the father and son duo appeared in Barrow County Superior Court in Winder to answer their charges separately.
Colt Gray appeared before the court at around 8:30 a.m. EST to answer to his four felony murder charges for which he is being treated as an adult, according to NBC News. His father followed him in the same courtroom where he is facing a maximum of 180 years in prison if he is convicted on all the charges.
Before the shooting, Colt Gray's family life had been in upheaval. His parents, who have been married for more than 14 years, had been living separately.
His mother, Marcee Gray, was also arrested in Georgia on Nov. 6, 2023, and slapped with a number of charges, including possession of methamphetamine, sale, distribution, possession of dangerous drugs and concealing identity of a vehicle, according to a crime report.
She said she separated from Colin Gray after 14 years of marriage because she had continually suffered domestic violence.
In a statement posted on Facebook in November 2022, Marcee Gray revealed that her husband had suffered significant abuse as a child.
"From my husband's first memory, all he knew was abuse. Severe physical abuse (I'm talking everything from getting a broken arm at age 8 while he was totally asleep to having a barstool crack his skull open ... I still rub my fingers across the scar/gouge on his scalp and think to myself, 'How?! I can't even comprehend it!'" she wrote. "That is what substance abuse can do."
She explained in another post, along with a video link to rock band Blink-182's "Stay Together For The Kids," that she believes God had sent her to him.
"I know it's hard to understand from the outside looking in. Everyone in my and his family couldn't understand why I stayed as long as I did. Ultimately it was my own decision … I made a commitment to the Lord and my husband. No one but me understands the pain that my husband lives with every single day," she said. "Every single person in his life has hurt or betrayed him… And I truly believe that the Lord sent me to him because no one else was strong enough to stay by his side through thick and thin. I'm not about to give up on him now … We are just taking a break."
The four people who died in the Apalachee High School shooting were identified as 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and his colleague Christina Irimie, 53. Authorities also said nine others were injured during the shooting, but all of them are expected to survive.
"We're very happy to say that they will make a full recovery," Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said Thursday.
Lyela Sayarath, a junior at Apalachee High School, described Colt Gray to CNN as "quiet" and said she wasn't surprised 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."
She said shortly before the shooting on Wednesday morning, 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. Sayarath said that because the classroom doors automatically close when people exit, they must be let back into the classroom by someone already inside. She said their teacher saw that Colt Gray 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."
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