A judge on Tuesday sentenced a teenager who killed two students and two teachers in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colt Gray, 16, had pleaded guilty Friday to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta, the AP reports. Gray, who was 14 at the time, was charged as an adult. Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm handed down the sentence after hearing from family members of those killed and victims, as well as investigators, a forensic psychologist who had evaluated Gray, a youth detention center counselor, and Gray's grandmother.
The minimum penalty for murder in Georgia is life with the possibility of parole. That left Primm with the decision of whether Gray should ever be eligible for parole. He decided the teen should never be allowed out. "There is no joy here today," Primm said, per 11Alive. "A 16-year-old boy will now live and die in prison."
- District Attorney Brad Smith had argued that Gray "cannot be in society." "We've seen no evidence he has any ability to develop a conscience or any ability ever to fully value human life," Smith said.
- Defense attorney W. Charlton Allen told the judge his client is "not irretrievably broken." Giving him the possibility of parole would give him "an opportunity of hope," Allen said, adding that without hope, "that takes away the ability for him to change."
- Teachers Richard "Ricky" Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire. Victims of the shooting and family members of those killed conveyed their anger and grief to Primm on Friday, almost all of them asking him to impose a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
- Investigators testified during the sentencing hearing that Gray idolized other mass shooters, talking about them online with other members of the "true crime community." Prosecutors played recordings of phone conversations Gray had with his mother, Marcee Gray, from a youth detention center in the months after the shooting. During those calls, he directed his mother to look up what people were saying about him online. When she described "fan art" drawings depicting him or comments people made about him, he asked her how much engagement those posts were getting and seemed excited when they were getting a lot.
- Gray's maternal grandmother, Debbie Polhamus, testified that the teen had a troubled childhood and that his parents failed him. Her grandson had grown "highly agitated and aggressive" in the weeks before the shooting, she said, adding that she had urged his parents to get him some help but they didn't follow through. "I tried to help Colt because nobody else was helping him," she said. Polhamus said she visits her grandson once a week at a youth detention center and that he has improved enormously with treatment and medication.
- Candice Broce, director of the state Division of Family & Children Services and commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Services, testified that Gray appeared to show improvement. After Marcee Gray was barred from speaking with her son by a July 2025 no-contact order and he started taking medication, staff at the youth detention center told Broce it "changed him essentially into a different child," she said.
- Gray's father, Colin Gray, was convicted on murder and manslaughter charges earlier this year for buying his son an AR-15-style rifle and leaving it unsecured despite signs that the boy could be dangerous, CNN reports. His sentencing is scheduled for Thursday.
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