(CNN) — For nearly two years, the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School has loomed over Winder, Georgia.
Now, the community is about to enter what could be the final chapter in the criminal cases stemming from the state’s deadliest school shooting.
Colt Gray, now 16, pleaded guilty Friday to 55 charges, including four counts of murder for the deaths of teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and the wounding of nine others.
His sentencing hearing resumes today as both sides present evidence before the judge determines whether Colt will spend the rest of his life in prison, with or without the possibility of parole.
Before the court turns to the question of punishment, families used the first day of sentencing to make clear the devastation left behind. Loved ones of those who were killed embraced, holding tightly to one another. Survivors, carrying both anger and sorrow, recounted the scars they still carry. Voices broke under the weight of memories.
“I stand before you as the mother of a child who survived that day, but surviving is not the same as being untouched by it,” Sarah Beaver wrote in a statement on behalf of her son, Jaxson, read aloud in court by Barrow County Assistant District Attorney Alix Daniel.
“Eight to nine pieces of metal are permanently embedded in his thigh. He is forced to carry the literal weight of a mass shooting inside his own flesh every single day.”
Today, the families will hear more of the truth as they inch closer to hearing the judge’s final decision, a sentence that will close one chapter of their painful journey while opening another: the long, uncertain road of healing.
Painful testimony, disturbing evidence
On Friday, the hearing opened with emotional victim impact statements, laying bare the devastation.
Victims who were injured in the shooting described panic attacks, nightmares and the fear that still follows them into classrooms, neighborhoods and even their own bedrooms.
Some of the survivors and families addressed Gray directly. Others acknowledged the troubled childhood revealed during his father’s trial, while making clear it could never justify the lives he took or the pain he left behind.
“Every day is a nightmare that we have to wake up to remind ourselves to our new reality. A very painful one,” said Ismael Angulo Jr., the oldest sibling of victim Christian Angulo, on Friday.
Angelo mourned his brother, who was just 14 when he was fatally shot by Colt, and asked the court to sentence Colt to life in prison without parole.
“The defendant’s family will still get to see their son, talk to him and know he is breathing,” he said. “My mother (and) my father don’t get that privilege. The only way to visit Christian now is by standing over his grave. There is no fairness in that reality.”
‘He was failed. He also failed countless innocent children’
On Friday, the day belonged first to the victims.
One after another, family members and survivors stood before the court, describing who they were before September 4, 2024, and who they have become since.
Breanna Schermerhorn, whose 14-year-old son Mason was killed, said she believes her son would have befriended Colt had he been given the chance.
“I have no doubt in my mind if Colt had actually attended school, as he should have, that Mason would have befriended him,” Schermerhorn said.
Her daughter, Alanna Schermerhorn-Wallace, turned toward Colt and recounted the final moments of her brother’s life. She spoke through tears as Colt Gray looked down at the table in front of him.
“I replay the video in my head all the time: The way you shot my brother twice, you saw him scared and running, and then you proceeded to shoot him in the head, killing him instantly,” Schermerhorn-Wallace said. “You’ll always be remembered as a coward.”
Sarah Beaver, Jaxson’s mother, captured the tension running through many of the statements, acknowledging details of Colt’s difficult childhood that emerged during the prosecution of his father.
“Two things can be true at the same time,” she said. “He was a child who was failed. He was also the person who failed countless innocent children and their families.”
Because of Colt’s actions, she wrote, children now know what gunfire sounds like inside their schools and parents know the fear of waiting “for a phone call that may never come.”
“Before September 4, 2024 … I believed that if I hugged my child goodbye in the morning, I would see him that afternoon,” she wrote. “I believed tragedies like this happen somewhere else. And that version of me no longer exists.”
Survivor Hayden Bowen told Colt she had chosen forgiveness — not for him, but for herself. Yet even as she works toward peace and healing, the trauma of that day is still woven into the life she is fighting to rebuild.
“I have frequent panic attacks. I can’t stay in places for too long,” she told Colt through heavy breathing and tears. “I can’t go out anywhere. I can’t even stay in my own bedroom without feeling fear. I’m not able to be a normal teenager anymore.”
Nautica Walton, who was in ninth grade when she was shot in the leg, addressed Colt directly.
“I started to hate myself because I couldn’t truly live anymore, because I let you take every piece of joy I had away from me,” Nautica said.
“I hate everything about you,” she told Colt. “I hate the scars you left on my body. I hate that you took innocent lives in front of innocent people.”
“Most of all, I hate that I let you live in my mind.”
What Colt Gray said before and after the shooting
Friday marked Colt Gray’s first public admission of responsibility for the attack, offering the public its clearest look yet into his planning and statements.
Barrow County Sheriff’s Office investigator Jason Smith read aloud from notebooks recovered after the shooting that outlined Colt’s plans in striking detail.
“So I’ll set my bag down, open it, and put on vest,” he wrote. “I’ll take it a moment or two to stay calm and really think about if I want to do this,” one entry reads.
Elsewhere, he wrote, “Stop I’m scared! I’m not a killer!” and repeatedly filled pages with the word “why.”
Another notebook found in his bedroom contained pleas to escape what he called a “cruel world,” drawings of firearms, sketches depicting a school shooting and references to Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz. Investigators also found what they described as a shrine to Cruz in Colt’s bedroom.
As Smith read Colt’s writings, the teenager remained expressionless, sometimes gently rocking and twisting in his chair.
The courtroom then heard recordings of Colt’s interview with investigators less than an hour after the shooting.
Sobbing and struggling to speak, the then-14-year-old described pausing in a school bathroom before carrying out the attack.
“I had a moment in the bathroom of like, I probably shouldn’t do this … next thing I know I’m f**king shooting in a classroom, dude.”
Colt repeatedly apologized throughout the interview.
“I’ve probably affected thousands of people, this was just f**king horrible.”
He described hearing voices in his head, believing teachers were plotting against him and later told investigators he believed he should be in a mental health facility.
Colt told investigators his father had just scheduled a doctor’s appointment to address his deteriorating mental health.
“I finally just now get to the point where I wanted to reach out and get help,” he said. “We were so close.”
He insisted his father was not responsible, and when officers arrested him, Colt asked them to deliver a message to his dad.
“Tell him that it wasn’t his fault and that I know he tried his hardest.”
Sentence still to come
Monday’s hearing resumes with additional evidence still expected before Judge Nicholas Primm decides between Georgia’s only sentencing options for Colt’s murder convictions: life in prison with the possibility of parole or life without parole.
Many of the issues expected to factor into Colt’s sentencing were first explored during his father’s trial earlier this year.
Prosecutors accused Gray of buying his son an AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas present and allowing him access to the weapon and ammunition despite warnings his son was a danger to others.
Jurors heard testimony about Colt’s erratic behavior, fascination with mass shooters and months of missed schooling, and family members spoke about his mental health issues.
Colin’s ex-wife, Marcee Colt, testified she warned him multiple times to lock up the firearms and searched online for cases involving parents charged after school shootings a week before the attack. On the morning of September 4, 2024, she called Apalachee High School after receiving a concerning text message from her son and warned staff he had access to guns and had become obsessed with school shootings.
Colin Gray, who was found guilty of murder and manslaughter charges in March, will be sentenced July 30.
Monday’s proceedings are expected to focus on additional testimony from prosecutors and the defense before Colt is given the opportunity to address the court himself.
No sentence can measure the loss left behind at Apalachee High School. It cannot restore the futures that ended that September morning or lift the grief families have carried for nearly two years. Nor will it erase the trauma survivors live with or return the community to what it was before the shooting.
But it will bring the criminal case against the teenage gunman closer to its conclusion as Winder prepares to welcome students, scarred by yet another American mass shooting, back for another school year.
CNN’s Eric Levenson, Isabel Rosales, Andy Rose, Rebekah Riess, Sarah Hutter, Devon M. Sayers, and August Phillips contributed to this report.
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