The mother of the suspect in last week's shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia says she warned the school the morning of the incident and that teachers were already aware of the warning signs.
In an interview with ABC News published Tuesday, Marcie Gray said she called a school counselor to alert authorities about concerning messages she had received from her son, Colt Gray, on the morning of Sept. 4, 2024, the day the shooting occurred.
“The counselor said, 'I just wanted to let you know that one of Colt's teachers texted me early this morning and said Colt mentioned a school shooting,'” Gray told the outlet. “Based on my intuition and the text message and this email, you all need to run to your classroom.”
Ms Gray said the last message she received from her son was, “I'm sorry, Mum”, and that his father had received similar messages saying, “I'm sorry” and “This isn't your fault”.
A woman believed to be Marcy Gray sits in a car outside the home of Apalachee school shooting suspect Colt Gray and his father, Collin Gray, on September 6, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (Ben Hendren for Fox News Digital)
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She also explained why she called Apalachee about a week ago: “I wanted to get Colt into inpatient treatment, and he agreed to that.”
Gray said when he heard the shooting, “I dropped to the ground and just started screaming.”
“I knew what had happened. I knew it in my gut,” she said, adding that what happened to the victims was “unfathomable.”
“If I could replace them, I would,” Gray told ABC News. “I would do it in a heartbeat.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Gray and the school district for additional comment.
Suspect: Colt Gray (14 years old) (Barrow County Sheriff's Office)
Authorities said suspect Colt Gray, 14, shot and killed students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimy, 53. Eight other students and one teacher were wounded, seven of whom were shot and are expected to recover.
Marcy Gray's sister, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post that her sister emailed her before the incident saying she had spoken with a school counselor and alerted staff to an “extreme emergency.” Brown said Marcy Gray urged staff to “immediately” find her son and check on him.
Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray and his father appear in court separately
Brown provided screenshots of the text exchange to the newspaper, and the paper reported that call records from the family's shared phone plan showed a call to the school at 9:50 a.m. The shooting began at 10:20 a.m., according to Gray's arrest warrant.
In this image seen on a video monitor, suspected shooter Colt Gray, left, sits in the Barrow County Courthouse during his initial appearance in the Apalachee High School shooting, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (Bryn Anderson Poole/Getty Images)
The boy's grandfather, Charles Polhamus, told multiple news outlets that Marcy Gray received a text message from his son on Wednesday saying he was sorry. Polhamus told CNN that Marcy Gray drove from Fitzgerald to Winder, more than 200 miles away, immediately after the shooting.
Authorities have said Gray's father, Collin Gray, gave Colt the semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting. It's unclear how Gray got the gun onto the school grounds or what he did in the two hours between the start of classes at 8:15 a.m. and the start of the gunfire.
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Colt Gray was indicted as an adult last week on four counts of felony murder in the shooting and, if convicted, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole or life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Collin Gray is the first parent of a school shooting suspect to be indicted in Georgia, District Attorney Brad Smith announced Friday. He has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and child abuse for allegedly providing the rifle to his son.
Collin Gray is being held in Barrow County after denying bail during a brief court hearing Friday in Winder. Colt Gray is being held in a juvenile detention center after denying bail. Neither has been charged or arraigned.
The alleged Apalachee school shooter, Colt Gray, and his father, Collin Gray, were living in Jefferson's former neighborhood on Sept. 6, 2024. The pair lived in the home until May 2022, when they were served with an eviction order. (Ben Hendren for Fox News Digital)
It's unclear whether Barrow County school officials knew before the shooting that Colt and Collin Gray had been interviewed by sheriff's deputies from neighboring Jackson County in May 2023 after reports of online threats to shoot up the middle school where Colt Gray, who was 13 at the time, attended.
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Collin Gray told investigators at the time that Colt had access to an unloaded gun in the house but knew “how to use it and not use it.” Gray also said his son had been struggling since he and his wife separated and that Colt had been bullied at school.
Fox News Digital's Timothy H.J. Nerozzi and Greg Norman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
