BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — The father of the suspected Apalachee High School shooter is scheduled to take the stand in his own defense Friday morning.
Colin Gray faces 29 charges in connection to the deadly crime.
The Barrow County District Attorney’s Office accuses Gray of buying his son the gun used in the mass shooting.
During opening statements on Monday, District Attorney Brad Smith told jurors Gray gave his son, Colt, access to the gun despite knowing he could harm others.
Inside the home where Colt, the suspected shooter, lived with his father, jurors saw ammunition scattered throughout the home.
Jurors saw evidence photos of an AR style rifle and shotgun unlocked in the father, Colin Gray’s, room.
Crime scene investigators testified that no firearms in the home had locks on them. No guns or ammunition were secured in safes.
In interrogation video, the father tells Deputy Jason Smith he allowed his son to keep the gun in his room sometimes.
“Ultimately, he admitted Colt was allowed to keep the gun in his room,” Smith told the jury.
“Why didn’t you do that last week?” Smith asked.
“That was not on the radar,” Gray responded.
“You’re saying it’s not on your radar, but something was on your radar,” the deputy replied.
On the son’s cell phone, there were pictures of the child posing with it, aiming it at the camera and putting it in his mouth.
In the interrogation room, the dad admitted his son’s anxiety was getting worse, he was having violent outbursts, deputies in another county had accused him of threatening to shoot up a school before and the teen cut himself.
The dad said he could not afford a safe yet. However, he was considering giving the guns to someone else to store.
“Do you think if you had gotten rid of those guns we’d be here right now?” asked the deputy.
Colin Gray responded, “I don’t know.”
He said he bought his son the AR-15, 223 Sig Sauer for Christmas because he wanted to get him into hunting and target shooting to bond. That was seven months after Jackson County Sheriff’s Office accused the son of threatening to shoot up a school online.
Before that, school counselors in Ben Hill said Colt Gray used a school computer to search “how to kill your father” online.
Last week, prosecutors introduced evidence photos that show inside a computer room Colt used. On the wall, there were several photos displayed of Nicholas Cruz, the man convicted of carrying out the deadly shooting inside Parkland High School in Florida. Posted on the wall with the photos of Cruz were various news articles related to the shooting.
Smith questioned the son’s interest in school shootings inside the interrogation room.
He showed the wall photos to Colin Gray.
“This is in his room?” said Colin Gray.
“Yes, sir,” said Smith.
The dad responded, “I tell you right now I never saw anything like that.”
Photos on Colt Gray’s cell phone show he put it there in April 2024.
That same month, texts show the dad discussed the son’s behavior becoming violent. The child would cut himself, hit his parents, damage furniture and walls.
The father continued buying his son bullets and shooting accessories despite his son reaching out for help repeatedly for feelings of mania, anxiety and depression.
May 2024 was the first time cell phone records suggest the father searched for a gun safe to purchase for the home.
He never bought it.
In August, Colt started school, but prosecutors said he did not want to go.
“I am restraining myself as for what I feel like doing,” Colt Gray wrote his father in a text message. “I have no control over what these things say and tell me to do.”
Eight days before the shooting, the dad’s phone shows another online search for gun safes. There was no purchase.
“Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands,” Colt Gray wrote his father.
The week before the shooting, the father used his cell phone to search for mental health treatment centers for teens. Prosecutors said he was supposed to drop his son off at a facility in Athens the Saturday before the shooting. Instead, he took him to a guitar store where he bought the child a beanie.
The child used the hat to help cover the top of the rifle to sneak it into the school days later. He wrapped the rifle with a Mother’s Day poster board drawing he made for his mother while she was in rehab that past May.
Minutes before the shooting started, the son sent texts to his father that said, “I’m sorry” and “It’s not your fault.”
The father cried in court watching surveillance video that shows his son firing the gun through the school. He fires bullets into a classroom first, hitting seven students, Christian Angulo died. The six others hit survived.
Video shows Colt continue down a hall, shooting three teachers: David Phenix, Cristina Irimie and Ricky Aspinwall. Irimie and Aspinwall did not survive.
The teen then sees another student in the hallway. It was Mason Schermerhorn. He tries to run, but Colt shoots and kills him.
“He tried to lift the rifle take aim at another student,” said Agent Lucas Beyer. “At that point, school resources officers came down the hallway and were bale to get Colt to stop shooting.”
Beyer told jurors the rampage lasted 41 seconds.
“He got on his stomach, put his arms out like an airplane, turned his head away from us and didn’t look,” said Deputy Brandon King. “It was like he knew what to do.”
Forty-two minutes before the shooting started, a teacher told then Assistant Principal Deigh Martin she thought a child had a gun in his backpack.
“She said it was awkward and heavy and had a poster board with a hat on top,” said Martin.
In an effort to point out any possible missteps before the shooting that did not involve the father, defense attorney Jim Berry pointed out Martin never asked the teacher for a suspect description, ended up pulling the wrong student out of class and spent time searching rooms and surveillance video with no luck.
A school counselor, Lisa Butler, told jurors the student’s mom, Marcee, called her 21 minutes before the shooting. She warned her son has access to guns and is sending strange texts to family.
“She was concerned about him because he had access to multiple guns through his dad and that he had became obsessed with school shootings,” said Butler.
Butler said she hung up, called the head counselor, but no one answered the phone. She said she called the Assistant Principal, Deigh Martin, but no one answered that line either.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2026 Cox Media Group
