Georgia school shooter Colt Gray sentenced to life in prison without parole

Winder, Georgia (CNN) — Colt Gray, the Georgia teen who fatally shot two teachers and two students and wounded nine others at Apalachee High School in September 2024, was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Your crimes do reflect permanent incorrigibility and I will sentence you to life without parole for each of the malice murders you committed,” Judge Nicholas Primm said in announcing the sentence.

Colt, 16, did not appear to react to the sentence. He declined to speak to the court before the decision.

The families of the shooting victims and survivors gasped and audibly cried at the announcement in court.

The decision concludes a three-day sentencing hearing that has featured Colt’s guilty plea, emotional victim impact statements, his confessions to police and insights into his motive and mental health.

Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith had asked the judge to sentence the teen to life without parole, saying he carried out the attack to be famous in a twisted online subculture that glorifies mass shooters.

“I know he’s had a bad upbringing, but … in this courtroom we’ve seen a lot worse,” Smith said. “And he’s the only one in the history of Georgia who has ever taken an assault rifle into a public school and opened fire on perfect strangers simply so he could be famous.”

Defense attorney Charlton Allen emphasized Colt’s young age and said he was “not irretrievably broken.” He asked for a sentence of life with the possibility of parole, saying life without parole is too harsh for any teenager.

The case stems from the attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on September 4, 2024, the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history.

That morning, school officials and resource officers had gone to intercept the then-14-year-old after he made several concerning comments. But in a stranger-than-fiction mix-up, they confused him with another student named Kolton Gray.

Colt then armed himself with an AR-15-style rifle — which he had brought to school hidden in his backpack — and fired indiscriminately into a math class before shooting several people in the hallway. Teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were killed, and nine others were injured.

He surrendered to police that day and has remained behind bars since. He pleaded guilty Friday to 55 charges, including four counts of murder.

The US Supreme Court has ruled juveniles cannot be sentenced to death and can only be sentenced to life in prison without parole in rare circumstances. Judge Primm said he believed this was one of those cases.

Colin Gray, the teen’s father, was found guilty of murder and manslaughter charges in March for purchasing his son the rifle as a Christmas gift and leaving it unsecured in their house, despite warnings that Colt was a danger to others. He is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.

This Friday, about five miles south of the Barrow County Courthouse, students will return to Apalachee High School for the first day of the new school year.

Parents investigated for neglect, abuse

Colin Gray’s trial earlier this year revealed the extent of Colt’s tumultuous childhood, and testimony Tuesday from his grandmother and a state official further detailed the family’s troubles.

His mother, Marcee Gray, struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, and the family moved repeatedly. School records show he was repeatedly absent from class, including missing his entire eighth-grade year. Family members spoke about Colt’s deteriorating mental health.

Colt’s grandmother, Deborah Polhamus, laid out a timeline of the family’s unsettled life, calling Marcee and Colin Gray “completely dysfunctional.” Colt had specific issues with his parents, she said.

“Colt was the one who seemed to have the most difficulty living with his dad and mother,” she said.

Polhamus said she believes Colt can be rehabilitated with proper mental health treatment.

“The Colt that I knew and the Colt that I know now is not the Colt that did all of this,” she said. “His mind was so distorted and … he had convinced himself that this was the way for him to go because then he could be somebody. All he ever wanted was to have a friend. All he ever wanted was to be included and loved.”

His parents had a “plethora of issues” related to child abuse and neglect, Candice Broce, the director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, testified on Tuesday.

Last October, Colt was placed into emergency foster care because his mother was violating a court order limiting her contact with him, Broce said. His maternal grandmother, Deborah Polhamus, was named as his guardian.

The no-contact order against Marcee Gray, combined with the start of medication, had “changed him into essentially a different child,” Broce said. He began eating better, sleeping better and was more engaged with juvenile custody programming, she said.

Marcee Gray has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in this case. Smith said she did not face charges because she did not have custody of Colt and did not possess the firearms at the time of the shooting.

Shooter’s motive was infamy

Colt Gray carried out the attack “to gain some sort of fame or notoriety from it,” Ashley Gilleland, an investigator with the Barrow County District Attorney’s Office, testified Tuesday.

“(I) wanna make history,” Colt wrote on the messaging platform Discord more than a year before the shooting. “I want people to remember the pain I caused and research me for hours.”

Colt’s journal writings and statements to police show he tried to copy and reference other mass shooters, particularly Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland school shooter. Gilleland said he put in coded “Easter egg” references to other mass shooters in his notebook and in his confessions.

“My love for Nik has formed into something in which I can find no other resort that can prove my love and affection towards him,” he wrote in a message days before the shooting.

After the shooting, he repeatedly asked his mother to search his name online and bring him “fan art” of himself, according to jail phone calls played in court.

“I’m in the big leagues, bro. And not in a bad way,” he said in one call.

Psychologist, investigators and victims spoke

Kevin Richards, a forensic psychologist, testified Monday that the teen’s paranoia, depression and anxiety were exacerbated by neglect and abuse at home and an online fixation with mass shooters.

But on cross-examination, Richards said Colt had exaggerated his mental health symptoms and made things up to try to get a more serious diagnosis. Colt did not show signs of mania, insanity, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, Richards said, and there was no evidence he had hallucinations.

On Friday, the courtroom heard recordings of Colt’s interview with investigators less than an hour after the shooting. Sobbing and gasping, he apologized and offered paranoid, hallucinatory explanations for his actions, saying he believed teachers were plotting against him.

However, several of his statements were later proved false, including those about where he found the firearm and his claim that he called a suicide hotline before the attack. Barrow County Sheriff’s Office investigator Jason Smith said he believed Colt’s hysterical state was “performative.”

In victim impact statements Friday, family members and survivors stood before the court and described who they were before September 4, 2024, and who they have become since.

“I started to hate myself because I couldn’t truly live anymore, because I let you take every piece of joy I had away from me,” said Nautica Walton, who was in ninth grade when she was shot in the leg.

“I hate everything about you,” she told Colt. “I hate the scars you left on my body. I hate that you took innocent lives in front of innocent people. Most of all, I hate that I let you live in my mind.”

The families of the victims said they would never forget their lost loved ones.

“The defendant’s family will still get to see their son, talk to him and know he is breathing,” said Ismael Angulo Jr., the oldest sibling of victim Christian Angulo. “My mother (and) my father don’t get that privilege. The only way to visit Christian now is by standing over his grave.”

He added: “There is no fairness in that reality.”

CNN’s Andy Rose, Devon M. Sayers, Alaa Elassar, Sarah Hutter and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.

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