Dad didn’t want to take away guns before Apalachee shooting, mother says
In the days leading up to the shooting at Apalachee High School, alleged shooter Colt Gray thought his teachers were out to get him and he was scared, his mother testified on Monday.
On the stand for the second week of the trial of Colt’s father, her estranged husband Colin Gray, Marcee Gray testified about text messages she had exchanged with the boy about how he was feeling as his mental health deteriorated.
“There are people after me and I don’t like it, my teachers.. I feel as if they’re plotting against me, somehow I feel like they’ll hurt me,” Colt Gray told his mom on Aug. 28, a week before the shooting, according to text messages shown to the jury.
Marcee Gray had dealt with her own mental health issues, losing custody of her children in 2023 because of a Division of Family & Children Services case and, according to previous testimony, testing positive during a drug screening.
Her son’s mental health determination has not yet been shared with the court in his case.
A mental health evaluation is expected to be completed this month, with a hearing set for next month, once Colin Gray’s trial is complete.
On Monday, she testified about how she became increasingly concerned about her oldest son’s mental health and his access to guns.
The parents are still legally married but have been separated for some time, Marcee Gray testified. However, Colin Gray is the only of the two parents facing charges in the Apalachee shooting case that left two students — Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn — and two teachers — Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall — dead.
The couple had discussed getting their son medical help and were set to take him to a mental health facility in Athens the weekend before the shooting, but a discussion over the boy’s access to guns thwarted those plans, Marcee Gray said.
Testifying about Colin Gray and his actions regarding their son’s gun, Marcee Gray said, “He didn’t want to take his gun away because he didn’t want to deal with it.”
Marcee Gray couldn’t get a ride to Barrow County from South Georgia, where she was living, to take Colt to the Athens’ facility so she asked Colin to come pick her up, she said. But he declined, and then cut off contact after the discussion about whether Colt Gray should have access to guns in the house, including a rifle his dad had gifted him the Christmas before.
“I did not see a mass school shooting coming. No way,” Marcee Gray testified. “It was the last thing that I would have guessed.”
She testified that they had been told by the school counselor that Colt should meet with the state-appointed therapist who went to the school only once a week.
Colin Gray had signed the document to allow that therapist meeting to take place. It was on the calendar for Thursday Sept. 5, the day after the shooting took place.
His school counselor, Lisa Butler, also testified Monday, describing the teen as “very fragile” and “looking like he was scared,” after he suffered an anxiety attack in school.
Colt Gray’s parents separated in November 2022, when Marcee Gray took her two younger children to Fitzgerald, Georgia, to live at her deceased grandmother’s home. Colt stayed behind with his dad. The following year, Colt Gray told Marcee Gray that he couldn’t live with his father anymore, so they had arranged for him to go to Fitzgerald instead.
It was during that time living with his mother that she began to notice Colt Gray’s behavior had changed.
“Colt’s behavior was alarming, it was very different from the Colt that I remember, that I had left with his dad when we left in 2022,” Marcee Gray testified. “He had a lot of anger inside and he was very aggressive and unpredictable, so much that I ended up relocating his little sister across town to my parents’ house because I didn’t want to leave her there alone with him.”
She ended up having a “complete nervous and mental breakdown,” after she lost custody of her children, which prompted her to tie up her mother to a chair and drive up to Barrow County, where she was arrested for vandalizing Colin Gray’s car.
In her testimony Monday, Marcee Gray indicated the relationship with her husband started to grow again after a couple of stints in jail, her going to and then leaving rehab before temporarily moving back in with Colin, while she looked for a rehab facility closer to Barrow County.
When she moved back with the family, Marcee Gray testified that she started cleaning and organizing the house, enrolled the kids in school, put together a budget for her husband and set up insurance.
While living there, Marcee Gray said she could tell her son’s mental health was a bit better. However, Colt had a “full-blown panic attack,” which prompted her to start giving him Zoloft, which had been prescribed to her, to help with his anxiety.
She also wanted her son to see a professional, but she said her husband was not a fan of the idea.
“My personal opinion is that he was afraid that Colt would go in and start talking about the emotional, mental abuse he was suffering at the hands of the defendant,” Marcee Gray testified.
That response prompted Colin Gray’s defense attorneys to lodge a motion for a mistrial, which Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm quickly dismissed.
Marcee Gray said she knew about her son’s interest in school shooters, primarily Parkland, Florida, school shooter Nikolas Cruz, but did not call it an obsession and likened it to being interested in true crime shows. At one point, Colt told her that he needed a vest to complete his school shooting outfit, but she didn’t take it seriously.
“I made him understand that was not acceptable, but I did know that he was just kidding around, or thought he was just kidding around,” she testified.
The morning of the shooting, she said she received screenshots of concerning text messages Colin Gray had received from their son, so she called the school and spoke to the guidance counselor about what was going on with Colt.
Less than 15 minutes after the phone call, Colt texted her, “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know if he was going to hurt himself, hurt someone else. I really had no idea what was going on, but I knew something was not right,” Marcee Gray testified.
Colin Gray is facing 29 charges related to the September 2024 shooting, including two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, five counts of reckless conduct and 20 counts of child cruelty. His is the second case in the nation in which charges were filed against the parents of a school shooting suspect.
In the first such case, the mother and father of Ethan Crumbley were convicted on charges related to their son’s killing of four people at Oxford High School in Michigan.
Prosecutors questioned Marcee Gray about her online search history in the days before the Apalachee shooting, which included “school shooting parents charged with manslaughter,” the Crumbleys’ verdict and safe storage gun laws in Georgia.
She testified that she and Colt had watched a documentary about the Crumbleys and was simply curious about how the case had been resolved.
In this case, prosecutors allege Colin Gray knowingly allowed his son access to guns and ammunition “after receiving sufficient warning that Colt Gray would harm and endanger the bodily safety of another” and caused “with criminal negligence” the death of the four victims.
Defense attorneys argue that nobody told Colin Gray about the mental health problems his son had, and that Colt Gray lived a double life by not letting his father into his troubling thoughts.
The boy is facing 55 charges, including murder and 25 counts of aggravated assault, and is not expected to testify at his father’s trial as his case is still pending.
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