By Ally Uhlendorf
Managing Editor
Four people – two 14-year-old students and two teachers – were killed and nine others were hospitalized in a mass shooting at Apalachee High in Winder, Georgia on Sept. 4. The suspect, 14-year-old student Colt Gray, has been charged with four counts of murder.
The suspect’s father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, was also charged with multiple offenses for knowingly allowing his son to have a weapon. Both the suspect and his father were questioned by law enforcement last year regarding “anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting,” according to FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. At that time, there was no probable cause for arrest.
At around 9:45 a.m., student Lyela Sayarath said she saw Gray exit the classroom, believing him to just be skipping class again, according to CNN. Sayarath said she did not notice anything unusual about Gray's demeanor. When he returned at the end of the class period, he knocked to get back into the automatically locked room but a student noticed the gun and did not open the door. The shooter then went to the classroom next door and opened fire. Sayarath heard “10 or 15 [gunshots] at once, back-to-back.”
Sayarath recalled the class started scrambling, with students rushing against the back wall of the room and others helping barricade the door by pushing desks against it, while some students called their parents.
At 10:20 a.m., the sheriff’s department received the first report of the shooting. Two school resource officers and law enforcement found the shooter, who surrendered at around 10:26 a.m.
At the time of the shooting, all schools in the district were placed on lockdown and were guarded by police. The FBI was later sent to the scene to work with local and state law enforcement.
Multiple law enforcement officers told CNN that Apalachee High School had received a phone threat that morning warning that there would be shootings at five schools and that Apalachee would be the first of the five. However, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said “there’s no evidence of other schools being targeted, but investigators are pursuing any leads of any potential associates of the shooter that was involved in this incident.”
On the morning of the shooting, Gray sent an alarming text to his mother, Marcee Gray, reading “I’m sorry, mom” with no further context. The mother then called a school counselor to warn them before the attack, telling them about an unspecified “extreme emergency.” According to The Washington Post, a 10-minute call was placed from Marcee Gray’s phone to the school at 9:50 a.m., about 30 minutes before police were notified of the shooting.
“I am so, so sorry and can not fathom the pain and suffering they are going through right now,” the mother told the Post in a text.
According to ABC News, all of the teachers at the school have an ID made by the safety technology company CENTEGIX, which provides a button they can press to alert authorities to an active situation. Twenty six teachers pushed their buttons, sending simultaneous notifications to police.
More charges will continue to be filed against the shooter in connection to the surviving victims, prosecutors said. The suspect and his father have not entered pleas.
The shooting is at least the 45th school shooting in 2024 and the deadliest this year, according to a CNN analysis.
