“I’m sorry, mom.”
Those were the words Colt Gray texted his mother Wednesday morning before the deadliest school shooting in the United States so far this year erupted at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.
That text was enough to spur a call from Marcee Gray to her son’s school to warn about an unspecified “extreme emergency” at 9:50 a.m., according to call logs and a text exchange between Marcee Gray and her sister, who provided them to CNN. Marcee Gray spoke to a school counselor for about 10 minutes, Charles Polhamus, her father, told CNN.
“I told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find Colt to check on him,” Marcee Gray later said in a text message to her sister. “I don’t understand what took them so long.”
“If it weren’t for me, they would never have even known to expect anything,” she added in the texts.
The call length and the existence of the texts were first reported by The Washington Post.
Despite the call, at 10:20 a.m. police were responding to an active shooting at the school.
The text and call were two signs that foretold the chaos and violence to come, as officials say the teenager used an assault-style rifle to kill four people – two teachers and two students – before surrendering to police. Seven others were wounded and two more suffered other injuries, according to authorities.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith has told CNN there were no prior warnings of a possible threat. Still, emerging details about the mom’s call before the shooting have raised questions about the school’s and law enforcement’s efforts to prevent the attack.
“We believe it was preventable — 100 percent,” Lisette Angulo, whose brother Christian was killed in the attack, told CNN on Monday. “They knew of the situation beforehand and didn’t take proper action to prevent this tragedy from happening.”
Barrow County School System superintendent Dallas LeDuff praised his school faculty and staff for their response in a video statement Monday.
“In the midst of an impossible situation, I’m proud of the action our staff took at every one of our school sites — especially Apalachee High School, where our teachers and administrative staff did not flinch, did not pause, and sprung into action to protect our children and each other,” he said.
He also thanked law enforcement and first responders “for standing in the gap on a day that we never thought we would have to go through as a community. I want you all to understand that we will get through this together.”
LeDuff said there would be additional security staff and mental health support for Tuesday’s return to school and stressed anyone who isn’t ready should let their principal know.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office on Monday referred questions to the Barrow County District Attorney’s office. CNN has reached out to the district attorney’s office for additional comment.
Warning signs, then bullets
Another warning reached Apalachee High School that morning: An unknown caller said there would be shootings at five schools that Wednesday, and Apalachee would be first.
Around 9:45 a.m., during second period, Colt Gray stepped out of his Algebra 1 class, according to his classmate Lyela Sayarath.
Sayarath sat next to him and wasn’t surprised to see him leave, she said, adding that he skips class “so you never really know where he’s going.”
Shortly after Gray left the classroom, a friend of Sayarath’s – who has a similar name to Gray – was pulled, along with his backpack, out of class, Sayarath said. When he returned to class, she said he told her administrators “were looking for the kid who sits next to you, not me.”
The “kid” the student was referring to was Gray. When Gray reappeared at the classroom door, another student, Bri Jones, said she was standing in his way.
Jones’ mother had always taught her to look out the door before opening it. So, when Colt Gray came back and knocked on the door, she looked – and saw him pulling out a gun, Jones said.
The teacher was sitting at her desk and asked for the door to be opened, Jones said, not knowing the student had a gun. But Jones stopped her.
“The shooter – he looked up,” she explained. “He was looking at me, my teacher, and then somebody was in the hall. He turned his head and he just started shooting.”
Apalachee High School has repeatedly declined to comment on whether another student was mistakenly pulled from the classroom in Gray’s place.
“The school failed them, that they could have prevented these deaths and they didn’t,” Lyela’s mother, Rabecca Sayarath, told the Associated Press. “I truly, truly feel that way.”
Cristina Irimie’s 53rd birthday was August 24, but the Apalachee High School math teacher wasn’t able to celebrate her big day in class until Wednesday morning. She came to school with cake and pizza “so she could celebrate her birthday with her kids,” family friend Corneliu Caprar told CNN.
An immigrant from Romania, Irimie was ever smiling and joyful in her adopted country. She had no biological children of her own – but she had her students. And she died in the shooting protecting them.
“That’s just who she was – she would spring into action,” Gabrielle Buth, a relative, told CNN. “She died for her children like any good mom would do, like a good teacher would do. She couldn’t have her own, so these were her kids.”
Nearby, sophomore Hazel Biondi was in her geometry class working on a math paper when she heard banging outside. One of her teachers, David Phenix, opened the classroom door to see what was happening – and then was shot.
“The whole class ran to the back of the classroom and that’s when we realized that my teacher got shot, and then my other teacher tried to stop the bleeding,” Hazel told CNN. “She was grabbing rags to stop the bleeding.”
Phenix managed to shut the door before falling to the ground, Hazel said.
“And then we heard more banging and we thought (the shooter) was going to come back, so we turned off all the lights and got quiet,” she said.
They sat in the dark and waited for law enforcement to arrive, while their wounded teacher remained conscious. “He was still responding, and my other teacher kept asking him to talk, so we knew he was still alive,” she said.
Once the threat cleared, Hazel said students had difficulty exiting the classroom because Phenix was lying in front of the door. “We had to walk by his blood, and that’s a sight we did not want to see,” she said.
Phenix’s daughter said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he was shot in the foot and hip. Yet he came out of surgery with his focus elsewhere. “After waking up, some of the first words out of his mouth were, ‘Is everyone else OK?’” Katie Phenix wrote.
Hazel Biondi’s mother, Nicole Biondi, 34, told CNN that Phenix saved lives on Wednesday. “If Mr. Phenix did not shut that door …” she said, her voice trembling. She further praised him that day in a Facebook post. “He saved my baby. He saved my world,” she wrote.
In another class, Richard Aspinwall, a math teacher and assistant football coach, heard a commotion outside his room and went to see what was going on, family friend Julie Woodson told CNN in a statement.
When he did, he was shot in the chest. His students tried in vain to help him.
“His students pulled Ricky back into the classroom and used their own shirts to try to stop the bleeding and save him,” Woodson said. “If he didn’t walk out and take the bullet … who knows what would’ve happened.”
Aspinwall, a 39-year-old father of two young girls, did not survive.
Fourteen-year-olds Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both students at the high school, were also killed in the shooting.
Police rush to respond
The Barrow County Sheriff’s Office received notice of the shooting around 10:20 a.m. Just a week earlier, teachers at the school had been issued wearable panic buttons.
By 10:26 a.m., the shooter was apprehended.
When a school resource officer confronted Colt Gray, he immediately surrendered to the officer and was taken into custody, officials said.
“I did it,” the shooter allegedly told investigators.
Around noon, Georgia officials notified the public of the shooting: “GBI has responded to a shooting @ Apalachee H.S. in Barrow Co. We have agents on site assisting local, state, & federal law enforcement w/ the investigation. One suspect in custody. We urge anyone near the area to stay clear while authorities investigate. More info to follow,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation posted on X.
Two days after the shooting, Colt Gray was arraigned in a Barrow County courtroom on four counts of felony murder. He declined to enter a plea to the charges against him.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the FBI disclosed that in May 2023 it passed along a tip about Gray possibly using the app Discord to make threats against schools. Deputies in Jackson County, where Gray lived at the time with his father, Colin Gray, went to investigate but said they couldn’t substantiate the information in the tip.
In one text, an investigator wrote that he had “made contact with Colin Gray. He does have a son Colt Gray 13yoa that attends Jefferson Middle School. He denied being on the Discord app in months and never made any mentions of threats toward a school.”
Someone responded, “Did he have an AR-15.”
“Only hunting rifles,” the investigator responded.
Colin Gray has told investigators he purchased the AR-style rifle used in the school shooting as a holiday present for his son in December 2023, two law enforcement officers previously told CNN. Colin Gray faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. He also declined to enter a plea.