Apalachee High School shooting suspect pleads guilty
WINDER — Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray pleaded guilty Friday, almost two years after two of his classmates and two teachers were fatally gunned down on the Barrow County campus.
Gray, 14 at the time of the shooting on Sept. 4, 2024, previously pleaded not guilty to 55 felony charges including malice murder, aggravated assault and cruelty to children.
There were 25 victims total, including 15 children who were inside a classroom when Colt Gray fired shots inside the room, according to his indictment. It shows at least eight people were shot, including the four who died, as well as three children who were wounded.
The 16-year-old’s guilty plea cancels a trial in the case, scheduled to begin in October at a courthouse in Columbia County near Augusta.
Dozens of community members, including some relatives of the victims, packed the courtroom of Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm for the plea hearing Friday.
Primm asked Gray if he was pleading guilty to the indictment.
“Yes, your honor,” Gray responded, standing alongside his attorney, Charlton Allen.
Responding to additional questions from the judge, Gray said he is taking medication for mental health issues but feels able to enter a guilty plea to all 55 charges. The teenager said he understands the minimum sentence he will receive is life in prison with the possibility of parole. The maximum sentence is life without parole.
Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14-year-old students, and teachers Ana Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall were killed in the shooting.
The identities of the surviving child victims are shielded from the public by court order.
Breanna Schermerhorn, the mother of Mason Schermerhorn, was the first of the victims’ family members to speak in court Friday. She said she does not forgive the teen, though she understands he did not receive the “support, boundaries and accountability that every child needs and deserves.”
She said the people who should have recognized warning signs and intervened before the shooting failed to do so.
“I can acknowledge that he was failed without excusing what he did,” she said. “I have no doubt in my mind that if Colt had actually attended school as he should have, Mason would have befriended him.”
Colt Gray has been in custody since the shooting, housed at the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center.
The teen’s father, Colin Gray, is separately scheduled to be sentenced in Barrow County next week after being found guilty in March of second-degree murder and other charges tied to the school shooting. He gave his son the gun used in the shooting, prosecutors said.
Colin Gray is the first Georgia parent criminally charged in association with a mass school shooting that their child is accused of committing. His prosecution is believed to be the second of its kind nationally, after the parents of a Michigan school shooter were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced in 2024 to at least 10 years in prison.
Colt Gray was a bit of a loner who had been bullied at school since the seventh grade and suffered from anxiety, his father told GBI agents.