Georgia school shooter Colt Gray wanted infamy and school shooter’s attention, messages show

Winder, Georgia (CNN) — Colt Gray, the teenager who killed four people at his Georgia high school in September 2024, wrote in messages before the attack about his desire for infamy and his obsession with Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz.

“(I) wanna make history to put it short,” he 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.”

“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 another message days before the shooting.

The messages were read aloud in court as part of a multiday sentencing hearing as prosecutors and defense attorneys debated whether Colt, 16, can ever be rehabilitated. He faces a sentence of life in prison, either with or without parole.

Colt has largely kept a calm demeanor in court, following the testimony and looking down at the table in front of him.

The hearing comes about two years after the attack at Apalachee High School, the deadliest school shooting in Georgia history. Just 14 years old at the time, Colt took an AR-15-style rifle to school and fatally shot teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. He also wounded nine others.

On Friday, he pleaded guilty to 55 charges, including four counts of murder. In court, victims’ families and shooting survivors faced him and spoke about their physical and emotional scars.

Several witnesses testified Monday, including a forensic psychologist who interviewed Colt, law enforcement investigators and a researcher on the true crime community.

The hearing is expected to continue Tuesday with further witnesses. Colt will have an opportunity to address the court before the judge delivers the sentence.

Colt’s father, Colin Gray, was found guilty of murder and manslaughter charges in March for purchasing his son the firearm and keeping it unsecured despite warnings that Colt was a danger to others. He faces decades in prison and will be sentenced later this week.

The father’s trial revealed the extent of Colt’s tumultuous childhood. His mother struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, and the family moved repeatedly. Family members spoke about Colt’s spiraling mental health, and school records show he was repeatedly absent from class, including missing his entire eighth-grade year.

Insights into Colt’s mental health

Dr. Kevin Richards, a forensic psychologist, testified for the defense Monday about Colt’s mental health issues. He said the teen’s paranoia, depression and anxiety were exacerbated by neglect and abuse at home and an online fixation with mass shooters.

“He was a lonely, dysfunctional kid who was anxious, paranoid, depressed and immersed in this highly dysfunctional world with these people who were obsessed with folks who had done school shootings,” Richards said.

Richards said he reviewed case files and interviewed Colt for about 15 hours total for his analysis. While in custody, the teen was diagnosed with a mood disorder — depression with psychotic features — an unspecified personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, Richards testified.

He testified that Colt could improve with proper interventions and medication.

“He’s still an adolescent. His personality is still not done. His character is still not done. His brain is still developing,” Richards said. “So there’s, I think, still room to intervene at this point to make some headway to undo some of that stuff.”

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 have any signs of insanity, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, Richards said.

“My evaluation didn’t reveal any actual mania or any diagnosis of schizophrenia,” he said. “They can talk about it until the cows come home, but there was no evidence for it.”

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.

Obsession with school shooters

Richards said many of Colt’s statements after the attack were coded “Easter eggs” intended for an audience of people similarly obsessed with mass shooters.

Like many other mass shooters, Colt had an obsession with other mass killers and drew inspiration from them, Barrow County District Attorney’s Office investigator Ashley Gilleland said.

Evidence from Colt’s phone and computer showed the extent of his obsession with Cruz, the Parkland school shooter. He searched extensively for information on Cruz and on the attack, including surveillance footage, autopsy photos and Cruz’s death penalty trial. Colt’s phone had more than 2,600 photos of Cruz, Gilleland said.

After the shooting, Colt excitedly asked his mother, Marcee Gray, to search for news about himself on the true crime community online, according to jail phone calls played in court. She told him there was “awesome” fan art of him on the website.

“I love this community so much,” he said in the call.

Colt also wrote phrases on his AR-15-style rifle referencing other mass shooters and the online true crime community, Gilleland said.

Victims and survivors find their voices

Friday’s sentencing hearing belonged to the victims. One after another, family members and survivors stood before the court, describing 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.”

Others acknowledged Colt’s difficult childhood circumstances, as revealed during his father’s trial, while making clear it could never justify his actions.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” said Sarah Beaver, the mother of shooting survivor Jaxson Beaver. “He was a child who was failed. He was also the person who failed countless innocent children and their families.”

“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. There is no fairness in that reality.”

What Colt Gray said before and after the shooting

After the victim impact statements Friday, prosecutors presented never-before-seen evidence from Colt’s private notebooks and interviews with police that offered the public a look into his mindset.

Barrow County Sheriff’s Office investigator Jason Smith read aloud from notebooks recovered after the shooting that outlined Colt’s plans in striking detail. One notebook found in his bedroom contained pleas to escape what he called a “cruel world,” drawings of firearms, sketches of a school shooting and references to Cruz.

The courtroom then heard recordings of Colt’s interview with investigators less than an hour after the shooting, in which he confessed to the attack.

Sobbing and struggling to speak, the then-14-year-old described pausing in a school bathroom before carrying out the attack. “I had a moment in the bathroom of like, I probably shouldn’t do this … next thing I know I’m f**king shooting in a classroom, dude,” Colt said.

Colt repeatedly apologized throughout the interview, calling his actions “horrible.” He said he heard voices in his head and believed teachers were plotting against him. He told investigators he believed he should be in a mental health facility.

He insisted his father was not responsible, and when officers arrested him, Colt asked them to deliver a message to his dad: “Tell him that it wasn’t his fault and that I know he tried his hardest.”

However, on cross-examination Monday, Barrow County Sheriff’s Office investigator Jason Smith said he believed Colt’s behavior in his post-shooting interview with police was “performative.” Several of Colt’s statements in the interview were later proven to be false, most notably where he found the gun.

Smith similarly questioned Colt’s apology letters to the victims.

“I don’t believe they were genuine,” Smith said. “I believe that they were for attention.”

CNN’s Rebekah Riess and August Phillips contributed to this report.

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