Apalachee High School Mass Shooting: 16-Year-Old Colt Gray Kills Four Lifers Without Parole | Today’s news
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old who carried out a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in the US state of Georgia in September 2024, was sentenced to life without parole on Tuesday (local time).
The teenager who confessed to carrying out the attack was charged as an adult. He was 14 when Gray went on a mass shooting spree that killed two 14-year-olds and two school teachers and injured nine other people.
Announcing the sentence, High Court Judge Nicholas Primm told Gray in the courtroom: “All of your parents have failed you. Your extended family has failed you,” adding: “This failure does not take you away from who you have chosen to adore, worship and become,” according to an AFP report.
“You weren’t bullied in Apalachee,” the judge said. “It wasn’t done out of hate. You didn’t even know anyone at that school. It was done to embarrass her.”
“You don’t seem troubled by what you’ve done. You seem to enjoy following in the footsteps of the killers you idolize. You’re not wracked with guilt. You’re proud of yourself,” Primm told the convict, according to the Associated Press.
“We have seen no evidence that he has any capacity to develop a conscience or any capacity to fully value human life,” District Attorney Brad Smith said during closing arguments, insisting that Gray “cannot be in society.”
On the other hand, defense attorney W. Charlton Allen said his client was “not irretrievably broken.” He also argued that the possibility of parole would give Colt “an opportunity for hope”, adding that the lack of hope would take away his “ability to change”.
The families of the victims supported the sentence. “This is not a happy day. I would say it’s a day of relief,” District Attorney Smith told reporters after the sentencing, adding that he hoped his team “showed honor” to the victims and their loved ones.
The rifle used in the rampage was a Christmas present from the gunman’s father
Colin Gray, Colt’s father, was the one who bought him an AR-15 style rifle that he used to shoot. Colin Gray himself was convicted in March 2026 of second-degree murder as well as involuntary manslaughter, a rare case in which a parent is charged in a shooting by their child.
Colt aspired to be a mass shooter: The Investigators
Investigators who testified during the sentencing said Gray aspired to be a mass shooter and that he often talked about them online with members of the “true crime community,” a group of young people fascinated by the attacks. He also talked online about gaining notoriety by carrying out school shootings.
In court, tapes of his phone conversations with his mother while he was in a youth detention center were played, the AP reported, in which Colt can be heard asking his mother to look up what people are saying about him online.
