WINDER — Colt Gray was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole Tuesday after three days in court testimony from victims, experts and other witnesses after he pleaded guilty last week to all 55 charges in the Apalachee High School shooting.
Judge Nicholas Primm sided with the district attorney’s argument that Colt must remain in custody for the rest of his life with no chance at parole over the defense attorney’s argument that the 16-year-old could improve as a person if given the proper resources that he severely lacked as a child and adolescent.
“You wrote, ‘I want to make history. I want people to remember the pain I caused.’ And there you succeeded,” the judge said when delivering Colt’s sentence. “You studied that pain when you studied the trials of your profane idols.”
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
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?
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, a dark corner of the internet where mostly teens and young adults obsessively discuss, research and idolize mass shooters.
Polhamus tried in several instances to get Colt’s parents to take him to get mental health treatment in the weeks leading to 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 the judge 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 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 and 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
The teen, who was 14 at the time of the attack, pleaded guilty Friday to 55 charges. Four people — two students and two teachers — were killed and several more injured in the shooting. Victims and family members gave impact statements last week.
Colt Gray returned to the Barrow County courtroom this week as Judge Nicholas Primm decides whether his life sentence should include the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors contend 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.
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
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.
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.
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.
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