Teenage school shooter in Georgia is sentenced to life without parole

Colt Gray, who at 14 became the youngest mass school shooter in a quarter-century when he killed four people at a Georgia high school in September 2024, was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“You understood the horror of what you were going to do,” Piedmont Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm said in issuing his decision. “This wasn’t transient immaturity. It was deliberate, contemplated evil.”

The judge’s decision comes nearly two years after Gray entered Apalachee High School, about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta, with an AR-15-style rifle and fatally shot two 14-year-old students and two teachers. Nine others were injured.

Now 16, Gray pleaded guilty on Friday to 55 charges related to the massacre – a list that included multiple counts of felony murder, aggravated assault and cruelty to children in the first degree.

During a sentencing hearing that began that day and concluded Tuesday, numerous family members of the victims implored the judge to ensure that Gray would never again see the outside of a prison.

The shooting claimed the lives of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14-year-old freshmen, math teacher Cristina Irimie, 53, and teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, 39.

“I have lived 688 days so far of a sentence with no parole,” Breanna Schermerhorn told the court about the grief of losing her son, Mason. “And that is what [Gray] should receive, as well.”

Aspinwall’s widow, Shayna, told the judge that her husband’s death had forever transformed the lives of her two young daughters, inflicting “a life sentence of grief and trauma” on their family. To offer Gray an opportunity for parole, she said, would impose “continued torture” for decades to come.

Testimony presented during Gray’s sentencing hearing this week painted a picture of a teenager with a turbulent, troubled upbringing who had become fascinated with previous school shootings and the young men who perpetrated them.

Prosecutors played clips of recorded conversations between Gray and his mother after the shooting, in which he asked her to relay what people were saying about him online, and wanted to know how much attention posts about him were getting.

Investigators testified about how Gray came to idolize other mass shooters, including those who carried out massacres in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and in 2012 at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. They said that before the shooting, Gray was communicating online with other young people fascinated by such attacks.

Gray’s attorney called a state employee who testified to the long-running abuse and neglect that the boy had suffered at the hands of his parents, who faced a litany of substance abuse and financial problems.

Gray’s father, Colin, was convicted in March after a jury took little time finding him guilty of dozens of charges, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors had argued that the elder Gray should be held responsible for failing to secure a gun he had purchased and ignoring clear red flags about his son’s deteriorating mental health.

One of the last people to testify on Tuesday was Colt Gray’s grandmother, Deborah Polhamus.

She detailed the family’s dysfunctional and volatile home life, including how Gray’s parents struggled with alcohol and drugs and sometimes failed to provide adequate food or medical care to Gray and his sister. She described repeated moves and numerous unsecured firearms in the home. She spoke about how Gray spent long stretches not attending school and how he became more isolated during the covid-19 pandemic.

“The Colt that I knew, and the Colt that I know now, is not the Colt that did all of this,” Polhamus said. “His mind was so distorted. … He had convinced himself that this was the way for him to go because then he could be somebody. All he ever wanted was to have a friend. All he ever wanted was to be included and loved.”

She added that Gray had been “so much better” since receiving therapy and medication while in custody, as well as the structure of regular sleep and food.

“He’s more like the Colt I saw growing up,” she said, adding that he had expressed remorse for his actions and was working on getting a GED. She told the judge she hoped he would have a chance to do something productive with his life.

In closing remarks on Tuesday, Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said that while Gray had experienced an awful childhood, thousands of other children in Georgia endure similar hardships each year without becoming mass shooters.

Smith also acknowledged expert testimony about how the brains of teenagers have not yet fully formed. But, he added, “we’ve seen no evidence he has any ability to develop a conscience or fully value human life.”

For that reason, Smith told the judge, “Colt Gray cannot be in society, and I ask you to sentence him to life without the possibility of parole.”

Gray’s defense attorney, Charlton Allen, closed the multiple-day hearing by making a final plea to Primm to give the teenager a glimmer of possibility that he might one day return to society.

Gray’s life, he said, was shaped by his parents’ “abject failures.” They offered him no stability, no regular medical or psychological care, no moral grounding, Allen said.

“The law tells us we have to consider these factors,” he said.

He acknowledged that the shooting victims and their families had suffered so much. But, he said, Gray had changed for the better while in custody. Forgoing any chance of parole would only add another tragedy, he argued.

“With parole, he will be given hope,” he said. “Hope is an important factor in somebody becoming a different person.”

Ultimately, Prime did not offer that hope.

The judge acknowledged that Gray had been failed by his family and, to some extent, by a society in which social media and online communication trump real-world relationships.

“But that failure does not absolve you from who you chose to idolize, worship and become,” he told Gray, who did not address the court Tuesday.

He accused the teen of carrying out the shooting “for the infamy of it” and said he had shown little guilt or remorse.

Primm concluded by saying the pain Gray had inflicted on an entire community would last for years to come.

“There is no joy here today, there is only a measure of closure,” he said. “The slain will not return to life, the injured will not forget their wounds, and a 16-year-old boy will live and die in prison.”

Brady Dennis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for The Washington Post, focusing on coverage of the Southeast. He previously spent a decade covering environmental issues, particularly around the American South. He also has covered international climate policy, public health and the nation’s economy.