Apalachee High School shooter gets life without parole

The courtroom was packed, including with family members of the victims, students of Apalachee High School, law enforcement officers and investigators, all waiting to hear the binary decision in front of the judge on Tuesday: parole or no parole?

The teen, who was 14 at the time of the attack, killed four people and injured several more in the shooting. Victims and family members gave impact statements last week.

Colt remained still and visibly unaffected as the judge issued his sentence and promptly exited the courtroom. Colt was handcuffed and led away under the gaze of the audience, which included his grandmother, who sat quietly, staring off in the back row even as everyone else in the room filed out.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

The judge said Colt’s family failed him, but that’s not why he committed the attack. Rather, Colt did it “for the infamy” in the “true crime community,” a dark corner of the internet where mostly teens and young adults obsessively discuss, research and idolize mass shooters.

“Your crimes do reflect permanent incorrigibility, and I will sentence you to life without parole,” Primm said from the bench, prompting sobs from the audience. “The slain will not return to life, the injured will not forget their wounds, and a 16-year-old boy will live and die in prison.”

After the ruling, DA Brad Smith told the media he wanted to use the hearing to warn society and other parents to intervene if their children engage in the same behaviors as Colt Gray did: hanging pictures of school shooters on the wall, obsessively researching mass killers and having open access to firearms.

“This is not harmless. The things they are doing online are not harmless, and we need to pay attention,” Smith said. “This needs to be out there. People need to know.”

The knowledge that the details in the case will be reveled at and idolized by children in the future in the dark corners of the internet did not dissuade Smith from bringing the evidence forth, he said.

“We know that’s going to happen,” Smith said. “It is more important for the rest of society to know this dark, ugly place exists so that we can start doing something as a society to fix it.”

Parole or no parole?

During closing arguments, DA Brad Smith had argued the shooting was not the culmination of Colt’s plan but was merely “one of the steps of the plan,” which included leaving behind “Easter eggs” and callbacks to prior mass shooters for people in the true crime community to find afterward.

“The horror of what happened is not even the end of it,” Smith said. “This is someone who is in the midst of their plan, and they’re still going through with it.”

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

The defense attorneys, tasked with seeking the less-stringent sentence for Colt, instead focused on whether the boy could be rehabilitated.

“They proved that what he did was very bad. They proved that what he did had some planning to it,” attorney Charlton Allen said of prosecutors during closings. “But to the degree that he is such a twisted individual that he cannot improve? I don’t buy it.”

Colt’s grandmother Deborah Polhamus testified in court Tuesday and provided an emotional glimpse into his tumultuous upbringing, which his defense attorney says left a vacuum that he sought to fill with the acceptance and admiration of his peers in the true crime community.

Polhamus tried in several instances to get Colt’s parents to take him to get mental health treatment in the weeks leading up to the shooting, as he had become more and more “agitated,” “hostile” and “impulsive,” she said in court.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

She told the judge he has improved with the routine and structure of detention, medication and therapy, and asked him to give Colt the chance to redeem himself in the future, even knowing that there’s a chance he won’t.

“His mind was so distorted, and just discorded, that he had convinced himself that this was the way for him to go because he could be somebody,” she said. “All he ever wanted was to be included and loved.”

Mom was ‘fueling’ his obsession, testimony says

Colt Gray’s mother participated in and encouraged his obsession with mass killers after he killed the four people at Apalachee High School, according to recorded phone calls between the two and testimony from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, attorneys presented in court Tuesday.

Marcee Gray acted as a liaison for Colt Gray to get messages and photos posted to the online true crime community after his arrest, according to recordings of calls from his detention center that prosecutors played during the 16-year-old’s sentencing hearing, which continued into the third day.

The two discussed what others were sharing online about him, including photos Marcee Gray took of her son via video calls during his detention, which she shared with his friends within the true crime community.

“I’m being compared with the big dogs,” Colt said in the phone call with his mother on Nov. 26, 2024, more than two months after the Barrow County shooting.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Prosecutors contended gaining notoriety and fame in the online true crime community, in which Gray was immersed for years, was the teen’s primary motive in the shooting. The defense has said he came from a broken home rife with abuse and neglect and did not receive proper care, both physically and mentally, from his parents, and struggled with mental illness.

Colin Gray, Colt’s father, was separately convicted of second-degree murder and other charges and is scheduled to be sentenced in Barrow County later this week. He gave his son the gun used in the shooting, prosecutors said.

Testimony provided in court showed Marcee and Colt Gray talked extensively in phone calls during his detention period from October 2024 to May 2025, after which she was ordered to stop all contact with him.

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

She read aloud to him comments and posts from people online, praising him and his appearance and describing collages of mass shooters that included him, according to clips played in court.

“It’s got pictures of all the main school shooters, and you’re in there too,” she said in one call recording, describing an online post.

“I’ll get out more pictures, whatever pictures you want me to send out,” she said in another clip played in court.

Marcee Gray has not been charged in connection with the school attack, and Smith, the DA, said after the hearing that he doesn’t intend to charge her. In his closing arguments, he called her “disgusting” with “contemptible” behavior, but said ultimately Colt was the one guiding her.

The defense saw it differently and tried to show how Marcee Gray had negatively influenced Colt. DFCS director Candice Broce, called to the stand by the defense, said Colt Gray began to improve after he was placed in the foster care system’s legal custody in October 2025, and Marcee was ordered by a court to halt all contact with him.

“His mother was fueling this ongoing obsession with school shooters,” Broce said, referencing her discussions with detention staff who also evaluated Colt Gray.

The no-contact order and the start of medication “together had changed him into, essentially, a different child,” she said.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Broce also laid out years of the family’s involvement with DFCS, which included investigations into numerous abuse and neglect allegations that were substantiated. Colt Gray and his siblings are all in the foster care system’s legal custody, and Colt has also been detained by law enforcement since the shooting took place.

“We looked into allegations of domestic violence, substance abuse issues, that the children had been locked out of the home, physical abuse targeted at Colt,” Broce said on the stand.

The family did not comply with the division’s referrals to seek additional therapeutic services, and Broce said she could not find any medical or mental health treatment records for Colt before the shooting.