BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — Deputies describe a desperate search for the Apalachee High School shooter during Day 3 of the Colin Gray trial.
The father is accused of giving his son, Colt Gray, the rifle used in the deadly school rampage.
Channel 2’s Courtney Francisco was in the Barrow County courthouse as two resource officers and an assistant principal tried to explain to jurors why a student was in the school for so long with a large black rifle before shooting the first shots.
A total of 42 minutes passed between a teacher’s warning and the first gunshots.
Two deputies described the moment they found this student, identified as Colt Gray, armed with a rifle in the middle of the school hallway.
“All I could make out was a like darker, black silhouette toward the end of the hall,” Deputy Donnovan Boyd said.
They told jurors he was standing beside someone’s lifeless body.
“He got on his stomach, put his arms out like an airplane, turned his head away from us and didn’t look. He did it on his own almost like he knew what to do,” Deputy Brandon King said.
Deputy Boyd said he started patting him down.
“I was able to take multiple full magazines for the AR-15 out of his pockets and secure those out of the way,’ he said.
Assistant Principal Deigh Martin told jurors she had been searching for Colt Gray for more than 42 minutes, after a teacher came to her office and said she thinks a student has a gun in his backpack.
“She said it was awkward and heavy and had a poster board with a hat on top,” Martin said.
Martin told jurors the only picture on the student’s public record was from fourth grade. She ended up pulling the wrong student with a similar name out of class.
She told jurors she did not ask teachers for a suspect description but searched rooms and surveillance with no luck.
She said she did not take the teacher who saw the gun with her when she went to the classroom.
Deputies found him because they followed the sound of gunfire. Once he was in cuffs, Deputy King said he focused on saving students.
“I was just trying to stop the dying,” he said.
Day 3 of the trial ended with a medical examiner describing the injuries each of those killed suffered.
On Monday, prosecutors told jurors the son started searching “how to kill your dad” online when he was 11. By the seventh grade, deputies in Jackson County accused him of threating to shoot up a school there.
The defense team argued the son denied it, and deputies never arrested the child.
Prosecutors told jurors the teenager had pictures hanging in his bedroom of convicted school shooter Nikolas Cruz. The defense admitted the child emailed Cruz in prison and put money on his commissary account.
Prosecutors said Colt missed his entire eighth grade year, enrolled in Apalachee High School for ninth grade. On his fifth day of attending school, they said he brought the semi-automatic weapon with him on the bus and into the classroom.
Students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and 53-year-old Cristina Irimie were killed in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting. Nine others were injured.
Officials charged Colin Gray with 29 crimes, including second-degree murder, second-degree cruelty to children, and involuntary manslaughter.
Colt Gray faces 55 charges, including malice and felony murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and cruelty to children.
Colt Gray was 14 at the time.
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