Colt Gray Pleads Guilty to All 55 Counts in the Apalachee High School Massacre, With No Deal From Prosecutors

Colt Gray pleaded guilty Friday to all 55 counts against him in the 2024 mass shooting at Apalachee High School, ending any prospect of a trial and leaving a Georgia judge to decide whether the 16-year-old will ever be eligible for release.

Gray entered what is known as a non-negotiated plea in Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, admitting guilt to charges that include malice murder, aggravated battery and aggravated assault without any agreement from prosecutors in return. Judge Nicholas Primm told him the sentencing range runs from life with the possibility of parole to life without it. The sentencing hearing, which began immediately after the plea, resumes Monday.

Gray was 14 when he opened fire at the school in September 2024, killing 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, and wounding nine others. The weapon was a rifle his father had given him as a Christmas present. Prosecutors presented notebooks recovered after the attack containing sketches of classrooms, handwritten plans, references to ammunition and figures for how many people he expected to kill and injure.

The courtroom then belonged to the people he shot at. Mason Schermerhorn's mother told the court her son "was kind, compassionate, funny and fiercely protective of others," and his sister described the life he had described wanting — a wife, children, an education. Aspinwall's widow said that "every holiday, birthday, anniversary and ordinary day is a reminder of what has been stolen from us," and spoke about raising their young daughters without him. Nautica Walton, who was wounded in the attack, addressed Gray directly: "You took away the innocence of so many kids," she said. "What you cannot take away from me is the person I am choosing to become."

The case has already produced a landmark elsewhere in the same courthouse. Gray's father, Colin Gray, was convicted in March on 27 counts including second-degree murder for buying his son the rifle and ignoring warnings about him — making him the first American parent convicted of murder over a child's mass shooting. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 30.

Families of the victims have asked the court for the maximum. Christian Angulo's brother told reporters outside the courthouse that the only acceptable outcome is to "ensure the shooter is never released."

Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith had signaled for months that his office would not offer terms, and Friday's plea arrived without one — a rare posture in a case where the defendant faces a mandatory minimum of life either way. Gray was charged as an adult under Georgia law, which requires it for murder regardless of age, and he is not eligible for the death penalty because he was a minor at the time of the shooting.

One of the men Gray killed is now attached to Georgia law. Gov. Brian Kemp signed Senate Bill 268 in May 2025 — "Ricky and Alyssa's Law," named for Richard "Ricky" Aspinwall and for Alyssa Alhadeff, killed in the 2018 Parkland shooting. It took effect that July and requires every public and private school in the state to put mobile panic-alert devices in the hands of teachers and administrators and to hand detailed building maps to first responders. Georgia was the eighth state to adopt a version of Alyssa's Law.