The teenager who killed two students and two teachers in a at Georgia’s Apalachee High School had a chaotic, lonely upbringing and immersed himself in an online community of people interested in mass shootings, a psychologist testified Monday.
Colt Gray, 16, to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting that also left several others wounded at the school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.
He entered the plea without having reached a plea deal with prosecutors. Murder carries a minimum sentence of life in prison, and it is up to Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm to decide whether he will have the possibility of parole after hearing testimony and considering evidence.
Teachers Richard 鈥淩icky鈥� Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, . Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.
Psychologist says Colt Gray had a 鈥榗haotic鈥� childhood
A forensic psychologist who evaluated Gray after the shooting at the request of the teen’s attorney testified that during their first meeting in May 2025, Gray asked if he could pull his arms inside his sweatshirt to wrap them around himself.
鈥淚 thought he was kind of an odd kid,” Kevin Richards said. The psychologist said he did four interviews with Gray for a total of about 15 hours and also spoke to Gray’s mother twice for a total of about three hours.
鈥淚t was pretty chaotic,鈥� the psychologist said of Gray’s upbringing, noting that the family had financial problems and moved around a lot, so he wasn鈥檛 enrolled in school for long stretches. His parents used drugs and fought a lot, and Gray had a lonely and neglected childhood, Richards testified.
Colt Gray discussed school shootings online
Gray was paranoid, Richards said. He talked about fearing that teachers were plotting against him, and that people in public were whispering about him. The teen said he thought his home computer had been infiltrated, prompting him to keep changing usernames and destroying external storage devices, the psychologist said.
Richards said that while he believes Gray experienced paranoia and anxiety, he doubts that motivated the attack.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think he was driven by hallucinations or delusions to do what he did. I think he planned it out,鈥� Richards said.
Most of the teen’s social life was online, Richards said. He was a gamer but also became immersed in a community of young true crime enthusiasts who were particularly fascinated by mass shootings. Initially, Gray focused on , who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, as well as , who killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater. Richards said Gray was particularly interested in , the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida鈥檚 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
鈥淗e had just kind of disappeared into Discord and disappeared into the true crime community,鈥� Richards said.
District Attorney Brad Smith showed Richards some of Gray’s online conversations on Discord, an online communication platform. They established that Gray would sometimes lie about his own mental health symptoms when talking to people online to establish common ground with them and get attention.
When asked by Smith if Gray studied and emulated school shooters, Richards responded that Gray was 鈥渒ind of obsessed鈥� with them.
In interviews with investigators, Gray lied about having called a suicide hotline right before the shooting, which Holmes had done, Smith said. He also told investigators he had damaged his computer the morning of the shooting and left it in the middle of his room, as Lanza had done. Smith called these 鈥渆aster eggs鈥� that Gray was planting to 鈥済ain fame and status鈥� within the online community that fetishized those killings.
In an online conversation just days before the shooting, Gray mentioned Sept. 4. When the person he was chatting with asked what was happening that day, he wrote, 鈥渟omething i have for nik!鈥� 鈥� an apparent reference to the Parkland shooter’s first name. He also noted that day was a Wednesday, just like the Parkland shooting.
The judge also heard from victims and the lead investigator
After Gray entered his plea Friday, the judge heard from family members of those killed and victims of the shooting. Most asked the judge to sentence Gray to life without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors also played recordings of two interviews the lead investigator did with Gray, one that took place less than an hour after the shooting at the school and another that was done several hours later at the sheriff’s office.
A his father, Colin Gray, on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. He is scheduled to be sentenced later this week. Prosecutors said he gave his son the assault-style rifle used to open fire at the school.
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