The father of suspected Georgia school shooter Colt Gray on Friday took the stand in his own defense at trial, where he is accused of providing his teenage son access to a firearm before the 2024 massacre.
Colin Gray, 55, pleaded not guilty on two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, 20 counts of cruelty to children and five counts of reckless conduct. His then 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, is accused of opening fire at Apalachee High School on Sept. 4, 2024, killing two students, two teachers, and wounding nine others.
The 10th day of the trial kicked off with testimony from the 55-year-old, who recounted his volatile relationship with Colt and his attempts to bond with his teenage son over hunting. He also testified about receiving a visit from law enforcement prior to the shooting after receiving a tip from the FBI that his son was involved in an online conversation about school shootings.
'He was a real quiet kid'
Gray told the court that when his son was in the sixth grade, he got behind the school's firewall to search for ways to kill him. Gray said he was concerned and had a conversation with his son when he found out about it months later, warning him that it was a very serious matter.
“He was a real quiet kid. He was super shy, is the best way I can put it,” Gray said.
Prosecutors on Friday painted a different picture, highlighting that Colt had behavioral problems during his sixth grade year, including drawing swastikas on a school calculator, leaving the school cafeteria without permission and getting into a fight with another student.
"Does Colt seem to be to you a child that is out of control?" prosecutor Brad Smith asked Gray.
"If I had direct knowledge of any of these, then I would say, yes," Gray responded, claiming that he had no knowledge of the incidents at the time.
When Colt got to the seventh grade, Gray said, he expressed that several kids were bullying him, and he was eating lunch by himself.
Around this time, Gray said he split with Colt's mother, Marcee Gray, who he said was allegedly using substances. Marcee Gray moved out of their home with their two younger children. Colt stayed with him, he said, adding that he went to Colt's school to speak to counselors and find a way to get him help and away from any bullying he was encountering.
Gray also said he thought of hunting as a way to help his son cope.
"My original thought was this would be a great way to bond with my son away from his mother and everybody else, and just kind of use that time as I did as a kid growing up to just kind of pretty much comfortable place doing something we like to do, and he can talk to me openly and freely about what challenges he may or may not be having," Gray said.
Gray testified that he took his son to shooting ranges to practice and then to hunt for deer. He also played golf with his son and bought him a guitar because he'd always been interested in music.
He also recalled buying his son a rifle for Christmas, telling him it would be his gun if he kept attending school and doing well.
A visit from local law enforcement
Gray also recalled that before the shooting, he was approached by authorities about his son.
He explained that Jackson County sheriffs showed up to his door to speak to him about a tip they received from the FBI that Colt was involved in a Discord conversation related to school shootings.
"I told him at one point in this conversation, if he even thought that this was related to Colt, anyway, shape or form," Gray said he asked one of the deputies. "He asked me if I had guns in the house. I said I did, and that he could take them. He could take those guns out of my house. I will go get them."
Gray said the deputies left the house that day and needed to gather more information about the incident. The next day, a deputy told him there were many people in the Discord chat and that they traced a suspicious IP address to California or Russia, Gray said.
"And so at that point he was like, 'I don’t see an issue here,'" Gray said.
Gray said the deputy warned him not allow Colt to have free access to guns, and asked about how he's storing them.
"I said, 'They are in my master building closet where I kept the guns for most of my life,'" Gray said. "When Colt was little, I said they’re up on the top shelf of my closet, you know, not just lying around the house."
Smith, the prosecutor, questioned why Gray would not take away Colt's access to guns after getting the visit from local law enforcement. Gray emphasized that law enforcement did not expressly tell him the threat came from his son.
Smith also highlighted that Gray had knowledge that Colt was cutting himself throughout the eighth grade, which could have indicated that he was dealing with depression and needed counseling. Gray maintained that he was researching options for his son, but that none were ultimately pursued.
In an email to one mental health center, Gray wrote that his son struggled with "anger, anxiety" and was "quick to be volatile."
"Does that sound like a child who should have access to an assault rifle?" Smith asked Gray.
"To that point, even with his anger, and being volatile at points and times, there was never any kind of threat and comment made from him about using a weapon negatively or otherwise," Gray said.
According to a text shown in court, about a week before the shooting, Colt messaged his father: “I have to kind of dance around the inconvenient truth at times I have no control over what these things say and tell me to do.” A couple of hours later, he texted his mother that he feels like teachers are after him and want to hurt him.
Smith asked Gray if he found the message sent to him by his son concerning.
"It was just an odd text," Gray said.
The relationship between Gray and his son became more tense when he began requesting "pricier things," he said.
"Sometimes, if he did not get his way about whatever it was, you know, we may have words back and forth," Gray told the court.
Bullying at school continued to get more difficult for Colt in the seventh and eighth grades, Gray said, adding that kids would throw shampoo and milk bottles at his son on the school bus. He began to look into online schooling options for his son and thought he had secured an opportunity for him with his sister's help. It turns out that Colt was never enrolled in online school, Gray said.
Gray said he would call his son while at work to make sure he was taking his classes.
"I remember him having a conversation with me about an algebra class, and when I got home from work, he was showing me a page of what he was working on," Gray said. "So, I never, you know, verified and that’s my bad. I, you know, I didn’t fact-check what he was saying."
Colt continued to fall behind in school, and Gray attempted to convince him to retake the eighth grade, he said.
"Listen, could I have done better? Yes, I could have done better. I could have done more. I see that now," Gray said. "But the overall goal here was just get him in a comfort zone place."
An increasingly volatile relationship
That summer, Colt went to stay with his mother for some time, until one day when he called Gray in tears, he said. His son told him that there had been an incident where he slammed a door, breaking a window, and his grandfather had called the police on him.
Not long after, Gray said the Georgia Division of Family & Children Services (DFCS) were called on his estranged wife and his two other children were sent to live with him. On Monday, Marcee Gray said in court that she had an open case with DFCS and failed a drug test, leading to the decision.
Marcee Gray admitted that she struggled with the decision and drove to Colin Gray's house one day to demand to see her children. When she arrived, Colin Gray threatened to call the police and the mother keyed his car before leaving, she told the court.
Colin Gray said one of Marcee Gray's family members told him that Marcee Gray had threatened to kill him and Colt before driving to his home. Colt overheard this on speaker, which put a rift in his relationship with his mother, Colin Gray said.
Colin Gray testified that having all three children with him was overwhelming.
"I underestimated the effort and everything that it took to just keep everything afloat with three kids, let alone all the ins and outs and things that happen to kids every single day," Gray said. "It was just was a lot more than I could ever imagine."
His tense relationship with Colt continued, Gray said, including at least three times where he described being "bull-rushed" by his son. In one instance, Gray said Colt threw a screwdriver that ricocheted off a surface and hit him. Colt was upset because Gray wanted to move him out of the computer room in order to limit his time on the computer.
But, Gray said, these episodes were not common.
"The bull-rushing and fighting was not something that happened as much as has been portrayed here," Gray said in court. "We, you know, if it was a disagreement, it was more kind of the yelling and screaming back and forth."
Gray also said that Colt never threatened him or his siblings with the guns that were in the house, and that ammunition for the weapons were also kept in his closet.
While the rifle was sometimes in Colt's room, Gray said, that never set off alarm bells for him. Gray emphasized that his son never indicated to him that he wanted to hurt others or conduct a school shooting.
"There was never, at any point during all of this leading up to what happened, there was never a perceived threat by me with Colt," Gray said. "You know, I never heard or he never spoke to me about doing anything as drastic as he had done."
The day of the shooting
Gray told the court that he could never have imagined his son would allegedly take a weapon to school on Sept. 4, 2024.
"I never thought that he would even have a thought process of bringing a gun to school or doing any kind of harm to anybody else. Well, on anybody at school," Gray said.
Colt allegedly opened fire at Apalachee High School on the morning of Sept. 4, 2024, killing two students, two teachers and wounding nine others.
The victims of the shooting were identified as Mason Schermerhorn, 14; Christian Angulo, 14; Richard Aspinwall, 39; and Cristina Irimie, 53.
Gray said he did not know of any claims that Colt was obsessed with school shooters, or that his son had pictures of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz on his room's wall. Colt kept his room very dark, Gray said, and he thought the picture was of a member of a band.
On Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent Kelsey Ward said Gray told her hours after the shooting that he had seen a poster of a school shooter on his son's wall a couple of days prior. Ward testified that Gray said he did not know who the person was, but asked his son, who told him it was Cruz. Audio of the interview was played in court where Gray himself said Colt told him, "that’s one of the guys that did that last school shooting," when he asked about the picture.
Barrow County Sheriff's Office investigator Jason Smith also testified Tuesday that he found inconsistencies in what Gray told him and Ward. Gray had told him he did not know who the picture was of, but Ward said he told her that he knew.
Gray had originally thought that his son skipped school again that day, and believed "There’s no way this is Colt," he said. When he didn't find one of the weapons at home, he said he "kind of knew it at that point."
Gray's daughter, Jenni, testified on Tuesday that her father asked her to "cover" for him during an interview with authorities the day after the shooting.
“He told me, like, if they asked me anything, you know, about if he knew that Colt had problems and that his problems would lead up to this, that I should basically try to cover for him. And specifically about the pictures on the walls, he told me not to tell them that he knew what they were,” Jenni said about the pictures of Cruz.
Gray was asked on Friday if he instructed his daughter to lie on his behalf.
"I would never tell her to lie about anything, first of all, but something serious like this, I, at this point, I still want to know what the hell happened," Gray said. "So, I would never ask her to lie or cover up about anything."
Gray said he struggles everyday with the idea that Colt would be capable of allegedly committing such an act.
"He’s a good kid, you know, he wasn’t perfect," Gray said. "But to do something that heinous, like I don’t — I don’t know that anybody could see that kind of evil."
