ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia high school students on Tuesday testified in court about the horrors of being shot during their algebra class, and recounted through tears seeing a classmate in a pool of blood, then seeing blood on their own bodies and fearing they might die.
Various students took the stand at the trial of Colin Gray, the father of Colt Gray, who investigators said had carefully planned the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school northeast of Atlanta that left two teachers and two students dead and several others wounded.
This is one of several cases around the nation where prosecutors are trying to hold parents responsible after their children are accused in fatal shootings.
A ninth-grade girl saw a hole in her wrist and began screaming moments after the gunfire began in her Algebra I class, she testified Tuesday.
“I was also worried that I was going to die and how that would affect my parents because my dad has a heart problem,” she said.
As paramedics carried her out of the school building, she saw Colt Gray on the floor with his hands behind his back and screamed obscenities at him as she passed by him.
“I remember yelling at him that we were kids, because we were kids,” she said. The faces of she and others who testified were not shown during a video livestream of the testimony because of their young ages.
Other students said the trauma was not limited to their physical wounds, as they spoke of being depressed, anxious and slow to trust people even now, more than a year later.
“Just seeing what I saw that day, it just sticks with me … and not being able to trust certain people, trust people,” said one girl who sustained a gunshot wound to her left shoulder.
Many of the students said they were still in counseling to deal with nightmares, fears of loud noises and anxiety at school and at home. "Even to go on a walk around my neighborhood, anxiety would fill my head, and I feel like somebody driving past me would shoot me,” a female student testified.
Colt Gray, who was 14 years old at the time of the shooting, faces 55 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter and numerous counts of second-degree cruelty to children related to the shooting.
Colin Gray should be held responsible for providing the weapon despite warnings about alleged threats his son made, a prosecutor said as the father's trial began Monday.
“This case is about this defendant and his actions in allowing a child that he has custody over access to a firearm and ammunition after being warned that child was going to harm others,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said in his opening statement.
Prosecutors argue that amounts to cruelty to children, and second-degree murder is defined in Georgia law as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children.
But Brian Hobbs, an attorney for Colin Gray, said the shooting’s planning and timing “were hidden by Colt Gray from his father.”
“That’s the difference between tragedy and criminal liability,” he said. “You cannot hold someone criminally responsible for failing to predict what was intentionally hidden from them.”
With a semiautomatic rifle in his book bag, the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster board, Colt Gray boarded the school bus, investigators said. He left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the gun and then shot people in a classroom and hallways, they said.
Smith told the jury that in September 2021, Colt Gray used a school computer to search the phrase, “how to kill your dad.” School resource officers were then sent to the home, but it was determined to be a “misunderstanding,” Smith said.
Sixteen months before the shooting, in May 2023, law enforcement acted on a tip from the FBI after a shooting threat was made online concerning an elementary school. The threat was traced to a computer at Gray’s home, Smith said.
Colin Gray was told about the threat and was asked whether his son had access to guns. Gray replied that he and his son “take this school shooting stuff very seriously,” according to Smith. Colt Gray denied that he made the threat and said that his online account had been hacked, Smith said.
That Christmas, Colin Gray gave his son the gun as a gift and continued to buy accessories after that, including “a lot of ammunition,” Smith said.
Colin Gray knew his son was obsessed with school shooters, even having a shrine in his bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, prosecutors have said. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent had testified that the teen’s parents had discussed their son’s fascination with school shooters but decided that it was in a joking context and not a serious issue.
Three weeks before the shooting, Gray received a chilling text from his son: “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands,” according to Smith.
Colin Gray was also aware his son’s mental health had deteriorated and had sought help from a counseling service weeks before the shooting, an investigator testified.
“We have had a very difficult past couple of years and he needs help. Anger, anxiety, quick to be volatile. I don’t know what to do,” Colin Gray wrote about his son.
But Smith said Colin Gray never followed through on concerns about getting his son admitted to an inpatient facility.
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Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.
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This story has been corrected to say that Colt Gray faces 55 counts in connection with the shootings.
