Teen pleads guilty to all 55 counts in deadly 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Colt Gray, the now-16-year-old accused of killing four people and injuring nine others in 2024’s deadly Apalachee High School shooting, pleaded guilty in Barrow County court on Friday morning.

Colt previously pleaded not guilty, but Friday’s hearing was for a non-negotiated plea and sentencing. A non-negotiated plea means the state and defense did not offer Colt a deal or agree to a sentence. That will be left in the hands of a Barrow County Superior Court judge to decide.

The hearing concluded for the day around 4:30 p.m., and is set to resume Monday morning.

Shortly after entering the crowded courtroom, Colt pleaded guilty to all 55 charges, including several counts of malice murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery and first-degree cruelty to children.

Before accepting the plea, Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm asked Gray a series of questions meant to ensure that the teenager was aware of the consequences of his plea and was entering it voluntarily. To each question, Gray responded, “Yes, your honor.”

>> REWATCH FRIDAY’S HEARING:

Because he pleaded guilty to murder, Gray faces a minimum sentence of life in prison. The judge must decide whether he should be eligible for parole.

The judge plans to hear each side’s summary of the case, evidence and sentencing recommendations before deciding the sentence.

Primm had given Colt until the end of July to reach an agreement ahead of his trial, which had been scheduled to begin in October in Columbia County.

Gray sat with his attorney at a table in the courtroom with his feet chained together. Members of the community, including some relatives of victims, were present in the courtroom.

Teachers Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall and 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were killed in the shooting. Nine others were also hospitalized.

Once the plea was entered, victims’ family members began testifying about their loved ones and the losses they experienced as a result of the shooting.

Victim’s mother on Colt Gray: ‘Those decisions were his and his alone’

Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son Mason was killed, told the judge she does not forgive Colt Gray. She said that while adults around him missed multiple warning signs, he was the one who decided to bring a gun to school and pull the trigger.

“Those decisions were his and his alone,” she said.

She described her son as someone who “made people that were typically unseen feel seen, accepted and safe” and said she was confident he would have befriended Colt Gray if he’d had the chance.

“Mason deserved a future and we all deserved a future with Mason in it, and Colt took that from Mason and everyone who loved him,” she said. She and two of Mason’s sisters asked the judge for a sentence of life without parole.

Shayna Aspinwall, Richard Aspinwall’s wife, told the judge the “grief of losing him is constant” and lamented that the lives of their daughters, who were 2 and 5 when their father died, will be “forever marked by his absence.”

“It is a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind,” she said. She asked the judge to sentence Colt Gray to life in prison without the possibility of parole, saying she didn’t want herself and her daughters to have to endure multiple parole hearings.

A teenage student who was shot recalled that day, telling the judge she remembered feeling “really scared and confused because I saw Colt standing in the door with a gun.” Atlanta News First is not identifying the girl, who is a minor.

She said she realized she had been shot and turned to a friend, asking him to hold her hand. She asked other friends to call her brother to let him know she’d been shot and didn’t know if she’d make it. She had trouble staying awake and regained consciousness in a helicopter on the way to a hospital in Atlanta. She had multiple surgeries and wasn’t able to walk for about a year.

“After the shooting I struggled with so much anxiety, and I felt like my life was over,” she said. She also asked the judge for a sentence of life without parole.

Another student said, “Some days when I think about the shooting, it feels like he killed me even though I lived.”

Apalachee High School Principal Jessica Rehberg said in court that Colt Gray’s “cruel actions” deserve “the harshest consequences.”

Gray’s defense attorney wrote in a court filing that he plans to call a psychologist, a counselor at the juvenile detention center where he has been held and his grandmother to testify.

Investigator says Colt Gray carefully plotted the shooting

Barrow County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Jason Smith testified about the timeline. Gray told his second period teacher just before 10 a.m. that he needed to see a crisis counselor but instead went to a bathroom to prepare for the shooting, Smith said.

He emerged from the bathroom at 10:21 a.m., and when he was unable to reenter his classroom, he went down the hall to another classroom, where he opened fire and then shot other people in the hallway. He ultimately surrendered to law enforcement officers.

Smith said he interviewed Gray at the school and again at the sheriff’s office.

Prosecutors played a recording of the interview at the school. Gray sobbed hysterically during questioning. He repeatedly apologized, said he wasn’t trying to justify his actions and said what happened was “horrible” and “the worst nightmare for everyone involved.”

He talked about having uncontrollable urges and hearing people tell him to do things and said he was supposed to see a doctor soon.

“I was so close to getting the help I need and the medication I need,” he said.

Gray told Smith that right before the shooting he felt things were getting really bad and he feared he was going to be attacked. He repeatedly mentioned believing teachers, and possibly students, were plotting against him.

The teenager was much calmer several hours later during the second interview. He said he didn’t target anyone specifically and didn’t know how many people he’d killed.

“Colt indicated that it was spontaneous, that it was a last-minute thing,” that he heard voices on the way to the crisis counselor and “decided to do the shooting,” Smith testified. But the investigation showed that the shooting had been planned in detail for some time, he said.

The investigator described a notebook Gray had that included a detailed step-by-step plan to get himself ready in the bathroom that included notations like, “Don’t shoot anyone in the bathroom. You will alert people.”

On one page he wrote, “I’m not a killer,” and “I’m scared.” On multiple pages, he wrote “why” dozens of times. He also estimated the number of people he would kill and injure. On one page, he wrote, “Surprised if I make it.”

Sheriff’s deputies had previously interviewed Colt and his father Colin Gray in May 2023 about an online threat linked to the son. Colt Gray denied making the threat.

Investigators found a shrine in Colt Gray’s bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors have said. Gray told Smith he “became obsessed with him on an emotional level,” referring to Cruz.

An investigator testified during Colin Gray’s trial that he had sought help for his son from a counseling service weeks before the shooting but then failed to follow through.

Colt Gray’s mother, Marcee Gray, who was separated from Colin Gray, told investigators she had urged him weeks before the shooting to secure his guns and restrict their son’s access to them. Instead, over time, Colin bought the teenager ammunition, a gun sight and other shooting accessories, records show.

What’s next in Colin Gray case

Colin Gray is scheduled to be sentenced after he was convicted earlier this year on charges he allowed his son access to the AR-style rifle recovered after the shooting, as well as a variety of ammunition and accessories recovered at the crime scene and at Colin’s residence.

Colin’s sentencing hearing is set for July 30 in Barrow County.

Prosecutors said Colin knowingly allowed his son access to firearms despite his knowledge of his son’s unstable mental and emotional condition.

Colin was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, five counts of reckless conduct and 18 counts of second-degree cruelty to children. He is facing a maximum of 180 years in prison.

“When you see (Colt Gray’s) guilty plea, you’re like, it is a relief, but you really want justice to be served as best it can be, and next week we’ll sentence the father,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. “And hopefully this will be a chapter that we will never forget in Barrow County, for those four victims, and we will not ever, but hopefully it will get us one step closer to peace and some healing for those families.”

This story is developing. Check back with Atlanta News First as we learn more.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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