The mother of the suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting reportedly told family members that he called the school that morning to warn of an “extreme emergency.”
Marcie Gray, the mother of 14-year-old shooting suspect Colt Gray, texted her sister after the Sept. 4 shooting in Georgia.
“I am the one who notified the high school counselor,” Marcy Gray wrote to the teen suspect's aunt, Annie Brown, according to screenshots viewed by The Washington Post. “I told them this is an extreme emergency and that I should go immediately and [my son] To check on him.”
Brown told The Post that his sister had found out suspicious information about her son and called the school, fearing “imminent disaster.” His aunt said she didn't know what exactly the suspect's mother had found out.
The aunt confirmed the report to The Associated Press in a text message on Saturday but declined to comment further.
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Colt Gray sits in Barrow County Courthouse during his first appearance in the Apalachee High School shooting on Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (Bryn Anderson Poole/Getty Images)
Call records from the family's shared phone plan showed Marcy Gray making a 10-minute call to the school starting at 9:50 a.m., the Post reported.
That was about 30 minutes before witnesses said the boy fired the shot, according to The Washington Post.
Two students and two teachers were killed in the shooting. The dead were identified as 14-year-olds Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimy.
Nine other people were injured, including eight students and one teacher, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Brown told The Washington Post that a counselor called Brown's sister and told her the boy had talked about the shooting at the school that morning.An office worker visited Colt Gray's math classroom at about the same time his mother called the school, Layella Sayalas, another student in the class, told The Washington Post.But Sayalas said there was confusion about another student with a similar name to Colt Gray.
Neither Gray nor any student with a similar name was in the classroom, Sayalas said, but an administrator left the classroom carrying a backpack belonging to a student with a similar name minutes before the shooting began.
Brown, who lives in Central Florida, told The Post in a previous interview that her nephew had been “begging everyone for help” for months but “the adults around him just abandoned him.”
Apalachee High School shooting suspect makes first court appearance
Marcy Ann Gray is seen in a 2023 arrest warrant photo sent by the Ben Hill County Sheriff's Office. Colt Gray, 14, is seen in an arrest warrant photo. (Handouts)
Screenshots obtained by The Post also showed Brown texting the suspect that his mother, the suspect's grandmother, had met with a school counselor for help.
A week before the shooting, his grandmother texted him saying Colt Gray was “seeing a therapist starting tomorrow.”
Marcy Gray pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges in December and was subject to a no-contact order. Her husband, Collin Gray is the defendant, The Post reported, citing Barrow County Superior Court records.
Collin Gray (54), the father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray (14), made his first court appearance in Barrow County Court in Winder, Georgia on Friday, September 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bryn Anderson)
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The suspect's father, Collin Gray, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of manslaughter and eight counts of child abuse for knowingly giving his son, Colt, a weapon. The boy is charged as an adult with four counts of felony murder.
Collin Gray told investigators in May 2023 that his son had been struggling with his parents' separation and had been bullied at school.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
