Apalachee trial: Dad told police he thought shooter pics were of rock star
The father accused of giving his troubled son the high-powered rifle allegedly used to kill four people at Apalachee High School had seen the pictures in his teen’s bedroom and even asked about them, he told police.
But Colin Gray initially thought the person on his son’s wall was the lead singer of the punk rock group Green Day, he told a Barrow County investigator one day after the deadliest school shooting in Georgia history.
In reality, prosecutors said Colt Gray had built a “shrine” to Nikolas Cruz, the man who killed 17 people at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The collage in the teen’s bedroom included multiple photos of Cruz in court along with several newspaper clippings of the carnage in Parkland.
Colin Gray said he had seen the photos on Colt’s wall.
“I thought it was the guy from Green Day,” he told Barrow County Investigator Jason Smith during a Sept. 5, 2024, interview played for jurors. “He was, like, ‘No, that’s not who that is.’ He never did tell me.”
Smith zoomed in on a photo he had on his cellphone.
“Deadly Toll: 17,” he said, reading the headline of a Tampa Bay Times article investigators spotted on the wall.
“Is that the guy that shot up the gay bar?” Colin Gray asked.
“No,” the lead investigator told him. “That’s the school shooter, and his name is Nikolas Cruz.”
Police had already interviewed Colt Gray at that point, Smith said, and the teen told investigators his dad knew there were photos of the school shooter in his bedroom.
In the hourslong police interview played Wednesday, Colin Gray said he knew his son was having a tough time in the months leading up to the shooting. Gray had separated from his wife as she dealt with substance abuse issues, and he said it was difficult raising their three children alone.
“I was trying to save everybody, keep my family together,” Colin Gray said.
Speaking to Smith without a lawyer present, Colin Gray said his son had taken an interest in hunting a couple of years earlier, and it was something they bonded over. The teen wanted an AR-style rifle, so Gray bought him one the previous Christmas.
“This was our escape,” Gray said. “It was purely range or deer hunting. That’s what this was, I thought.”
“Apparently not,” Smith replied.
Several witnesses have testified that Colt Gray was infatuated with the weapon. Both his mom and sister said he cleaned the gun obsessively and kept it in his bedroom.
Colin Gray bought his son a laser sight for the rifle, he told police, and even gave him a higher-capacity magazine, because the boy wanted the weapon to hold more rounds.
“There was never an inkling or thought of anything like this ever happening,” Colin Gray told the detective.
“Well, there was an inkling,” Smith said.
Shortly before the shooting, Colt Gray’s mother, Marcee Gray, suggested to her husband they get inpatient counseling for their son, which apparently never happened. And when she confronted the teen about removing the firearms from the home, she said he shoved her down from behind.
At that point, Colin Gray said he realized the guns needed to be locked up or removed from the house, he said in the police interview.
“Until we can get him some help and everybody calm, I just need to do the right thing and get them put up or out of the house,” he said he remembered thinking.
He mulled lending the guns to the local dealer he bought them from, he said. He also started to buy a $134 gun safe on Amazon, but left the item in his online cart because he was $78 short.
“This may be a hard pill to swallow: Do you think if you had gotten rid of those guns that you would be here right now?” Smith asked him in the interview room.
“I’m finding out things about him I didn’t even know were happening,” Colin Gray said. “I’m so sorry.”
He was then asked to turn around and put his hands behind his back.
Gray, 55, faces 29 counts in connection with the school shooting, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct and child cruelty. He has pleaded not guilty.
Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14-year-old students, and teachers Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall were killed that morning at Apalachee High.
Gray is the first Georgia parent criminally charged in association with a mass school shooting their child is accused of committing. In the only other case like it in the United States to have proceeded to trial, the parents of a Michigan school shooter were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
Criminal defense attorney Joshua Schiffer, who has closely monitored the trial, said District Attorney Brad Smith was forced to take a political risk by bringing a case that straddles Second Amendment gun rights and parental responsibility.
“The district attorney had to do something,” said Schiffer, who called the Apalachee shooting the biggest case in Barrow County’s history.
So far, he said he believes the prosecution has done its job.
“They have presented very strong evidence to satisfy the charges,” he said.
Now, he said Colin Gray’s defense team faces a difficult task considering the “overwhelming nature” of what the state has presented.
The state is expected to resume its case Thursday morning.
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