On the morning of September 4, a student rode the bus to his Georgia school with a rifle and knife hidden in his backpack, investigators said.
Within two hours of arriving at Apalachee High School in Winder, prosecutors said he committed the deadliest US school shooting since the March 2023 rampage at the Covenant School in Nashville, and the 45th this year.
Two teachers and two students were dead and nine others, including one teacher and eight students, were injured.
Newly obtained emergency recordings and dispatch records from the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office captured the chaos and panic that unfolded inside the school as an active shooter was reported, and outside the school as worried parents got panicked texts from their teenagers.
Colt Gray, 14, who was enrolled at the school on August 14 and had already missed nine days of classes leading up to the shooting, is charged with four counts of felony murder and will face additional charges, the Barrow County district attorney has said. He will be tried as an adult and if convicted, he could face up to life in prison.
His father, Colin Gray, 54, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children. He bought the gun allegedly used in the shooting in December 2023 as a holiday present for his son, according to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
The shooter and his father have not entered pleas. An attorney for Colt Gray declined to comment to CNN, and an attorney for Colin Gray has not responded to a request for comment.
September 4 at Apalachee High School
Colt Gray rides the bus to school, bringing with him an assault-style rifle concealed in his backpack, along with a knife, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which noted the school does not have metal detectors.
During his Algebra 1 class, Gray asked the teacher if he could go to the front office and speak to someone, the bureau said. The teacher allowed him to leave class around 9:45 a.m. and take his belongings with him, student Lyela Sayarath, who was sitting next to him in class, previously told CNN.
Gray sends an alarming, cryptic text to his mother, Marcee Gray, prompting her to warn the school something could be wrong. “I’m sorry, mom,” the text read. An unknown person also called the school that morning, warning of shootings at five schools, with Apalachee to be the first, according to authorities.
Gray’s mother places a 10-minute phone call to the school around 9:50 a.m., the Washington Post reported. She asks administrators to check on her son and authorities start searching for him, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told CNN affiliate WXIA.
A resource officer went to look for the boy but there is another student in the same class with “almost identically the same name,” and neither he nor Colt Gray are in the classroom at the time, according to the sheriff.
“He went to the bathroom with a student that has the almost same name – that’s who they think we’re looking for,” Smith said.
The officers think they caught up to Colt Gray in time but were speaking to the other student. “As we’re trying to figure out what’s going on, the shooting starts,” Smith told WXIA.
Shortly after Gray leaves the bathroom and hides from teachers, he walks out with the rifle and starts looking for “soft targets,” Smith told WXIA.
Authorities get the first calls of an active shooter on campus at 10:20 a.m. after someone presses a wearable panic button issued just a week earlier to teachers, the sheriff said.
The first call for the shooting comes in from a “RapidSOS” device at 10:22 a.m. ET, computer-aided dispatch reports released by Barrow County on Friday show. The Barrow County Sheriff’s Office arrive at the school a short while later with two school resource officers.
“Active shooter!” an officer is heard yelling in one audio clip while speaking with a dispatcher, who repeats the phrase back to him. Another officer can be heard responding calmly, “Correct. We have an active shooter at Apalachee High School.”
Two minutes later, authorities have the suspect’s name as “Colt” and one student is already dead, according to the reports.
The suspect surrenders after a resource officer confronts him and he is taken into custody, Smith said. By 10:30 a.m., Gray is “in custody, not injured,” the reports show.
Fifteen minutes later, the reports show one person is dead in a hallway and three are dead in another hallway.
An officer, sounding slightly out of breath, asks the dispatcher to “roll EMS.” She is heard confirming emergency medical services were en route to the high school.
At 11:38 a.m., the school sends an urgent text to parents: “Haymon-Morris Midd: Parents and Guardians, HMMS is still on a hard lockdown. HMMS students are safe and secure. Please be patient.”
Just after 11:45 a.m., a woman who identifies herself as Colt’s aunt finds out about the text he had sent and makes a tearful call to a Barrow County 911 operator, saying she is afraid her nephew is involved in the school shooting at Apalachee High School, according to a recording released Friday.
“My mom just called me and said that Colt texted his mom, my sister and his dad that he was sorry, and they called the school and told the counselor to go get him immediately,” the woman tells the operator. “And then she said she saw that there’s been a shooting, and I’m just worried it was him.”
Meanwhile, a school counselor informs Marcee Gray her son had made references to school shootings, she told ABC News, prompting her and the teen’s grandfather to travel 200 miles from Fitzgerald to Winder, Georgia.
Asked why responding law enforcement did not shoot the suspect, the sheriff told WXIA Gray had “committed to putting the gun down and laying out in the prone position, as he was told to do.”
“We put him in handcuffs, and the threat is over at that point,” Smith added.
With the suspect detained, officers stream into Apalachee High, evacuating students from classrooms as paramedics tended to the wounded.
By midafternoon, the school sends another text: “Haymon-Morris Midd: Law enforcement has now given the ok to lift the lockdown … Thank you.”
As families scramble to reunite outside the school, Lyela Sayarath recounts the shooting to a CNN reporter. She describes the moment she saw a friend who had been in a classroom where shots were fired.
“He saw it. He saw somebody get shot. He had blood on him. He was kinda limping,” Lyela said. “He looked horrified.”
CNN’s Dalia Faheid, Ashley R. Williams, Alisha Ebrahimji, Nouran Salahieh, Michelle Krupa, Nicole Chavez and Jamiel Lynch contributed to this report.
