The mother of 14-year-old Colt Gray, who has been charged with fatally shooting four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, attempted to warn school officials just minutes before the alleged gunman carried out his rampage.
The case has sparked national discussions about gun control, bullying, and the responsibilities of parents.
Marcee Gray, Colt’s mother, called the school just before the attack, alerting them to an “extreme emergency” involving her son, according to Annie Brown, Colt’s aunt, in an interview with The Washington Post.
“I was the one that notified the school counselor at the high school. I told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find [my son] to check on him,” Brown said.
She provided screenshots of the text messages exchanged between herself and her sister and gave evidence of the call, which happened about 30 minutes before the shooting.
The Associated Press confirmed the reports after speaking with Brown. Phone records from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call to the school made at 9:50 a.m. School personnel attempted to locate Colt before the shooting but were too late.
Around the same time, a school administrator went to the son’s math classroom, according to Lyela Sayarath, a student in the class. Sayarath said there seemed to be confusion involving another student in the class with a name similar to that of Gray’s son. Neither student was in the room, and the official left with a backpack belonging to the similarly named student, she said. The shooting began minutes later.
The phone log, texts and interviews provide the strongest indications yet that officials at Apalachee High were alerted to concerns about the suspect on the morning of the shooting and may have been looking for him in the minutes before he allegedly killed four people and injured nine with an AR-15-style rifle. The texts also show that the school and family were in contact about his mental health a week before the shooting, and that Brown told a relative the teen was at the time having “homicidal and suicidal thoughts.”
Colt Gray’s family history and personal struggles are emerging as critical factors in understanding what could have motivated the incident. He had reportedly struggled with bullying and his parents’ separation.
Colin Gray, the suspect’s father, told investigators that his son had often been bullied by other classmates, recalling, “Some students just ridiculed him day after day after day.”
Colin recalled encouraging his son to take up outdoor activities like shooting and hunting.
It was revealed shortly after the shooting that Colt had been on law enforcement’s radar for having previously made threats to carry out a mass shooting at the school. In 2023, investigators interviewed Colt and his father about the threats, which were posted on Discord. Colt denied making the threats, and law enforcement did not find substantial evidence to link him to the post. “I’m going to be mad as hell if he did, and then all the guns will go away,” his father told investigators.
Now, the father is also facing prison time. He is being charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for giving his son the rifle that was used in the attack. The case mirrors that of the parents of Ethan Crumbley, who murdered four students at Oxford High School in Michigan.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison for failing to secure the firearm their son used in the assault.
