Accused Apalachee High School Shooter Colt Gray Set for Non-Negotiated Plea and Sentencing Hearing July 24

Colt Gray will appear July 24 in Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Georgia, for a non-negotiated plea and sentencing hearing. Court documents filed Friday indicate the 16-year-old will change his plea from not guilty. Gray, charged as an adult, faces 55 counts that include malice murder, aggravated battery and aggravated assault.

He faces up to 30 years in prison on the second-degree murder charges and up to 180 years total. Gray was 14 when the September 2024 shooting occurred at Apalachee High School. He has remained in custody at a juvenile detention center since his arrest.

Prosecutors allege he carried a semiautomatic assault-style rifle onto a school bus with the barrel protruding from his book bag, left his second-period class, and emerged from a bathroom to shoot people in a classroom and hallways. Gray's attorneys indicated in late 2025 that a plea deal was under negotiation. The judge set a deadline after that disclosure.

Gray's father, Colin Gray, was convicted in March of second-degree murder and all other charges. Prosecutors said he ignored multiple instances of violence by his son over the years. Colin Gray admitted giving his son the rifle used in the attack but told the court he did so to bond with the boy during hunting and range visits.

He was the first adult charged in connection with a school shooting in Georgia and the third parent nationally to face such charges tied to a mass shooting by a child.