Georgia school shooter handed victims’ families ‘life sentence of trauma’, court hears

Colt Gray, who was 14 at time of attack on Apalachee high school, admits 55 charges including four counts of murder

The wife of a teacher killed in a high school shooting in Georgia two years ago told a court on Friday that the families of the four victims had been handed “a life sentence of grief and trauma” by the teenage student who murdered them.

Shayna Aspinwall, whose husband Richard died at Apalachee high school, about 45 miles north-east Atlanta, on 4 September 2024, was speaking at the sentencing hearing for Colt Gray, 16, who earlier pleaded to 55 charges, including second-degree murder.

Gray admitted during a state court hearing in Barrow county superior court in Winder, Georgia, that he carried out the attack , his “non-negotiated” plea deal with prosecutors negating to need for a trial scheduled for October.

The agreement meant no sentence was agreed, and instead superior court judge Nicholas Primm heard a summary of the case and evidence from the defense and prosecution before determining the punishment for Gray’s conviction on 55 counts, including second-degree murder.

Teachers Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, were killed in the shooting, as well as students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14. Another teacher and eight other students were wounded, seven of them by gunshots.

Shayna Aspinwall told the court that the lives of their daughters, who were two and five when their father died, will be “forever marked by his absence”.

“It is a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind,” she said.

Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son Mason was killed, said she did not forgive Colt Gray. While adults around him missed warning signs, she said, he decided to bring the gun and to pull the trigger.

“Those decisions were his and his alone,” she said. “Mason deserved a future and we all deserved a future with Mason in it, and Colt took that from Mason and everyone who loved him.”

Gray’s father, Colin Gray, was convicted in March on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and is scheduled to be sentenced next week. Prosecutors said he gave his son the assault-style rifle that was used in the school attack.

Colt Gray was led into court for Friday’s hearing with his feet chained together, watched by several relatives of victims in the public gallery.

The judge questioned Gray to ensure he understood the consequences of his plea and was entering it voluntarily. Gray responded, “Yes, your honor,” each time.

Murder carries a minimum sentence of life in prison. The judge must decide whether Gray should be eligible for parole after hearing victim statements, evidence and each side’s summary of the case.

Several family members of those killed, and students who were shot, gave statements expressing anger and grief. Most asked the judge to sentence Gray to life without parole.

A teenage student who was wounded, a minor whose identity the Guardian is withholding, recalled the day of the shooting, saying she remembered feeling “really scared and confused because I saw Colt standing in the door with a gun”.

She said she realized she had been shot and asked a friend to hold her hand. She asked other friends to call her brother to let him know she had been shot and didn’t know if she would make it. She had multiple surgeries and was unable to walk for about a year.

“After the shooting, I struggled with so much anxiety, and I felt like my life was over,” she said.

Apalachee high school’s principal, Jessica Rehberg, said Colt Gray’s “cruel actions” deserve “the harshest consequences”.

Among the 55 charges were four murder counts and 25 of aggravated assault. Gray, 14 at the time of the shooting, was charged as an adult.

According to detectives from the Georgia bureau of investigation, Gray carried the rifle on to the school bus with the barrel wrapped in a poster board, then left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the rifle, shooting people in a classroom and hallway.

They said Gray planned the attack carefully, and left instructions and a diagram in a notebook that indicated he believed he could kill as many as 26 people and wound 13 others.

Investigators said they found a shrine in Gray’s bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, who murdered 18 people at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in 2018. Cruz was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.

Sheriff’s deputies interviewed Colt and Colin Gray in May 2023, 14 months before the attack, about an online threat linked to the son. Colt Gray denied making the threat.

Records show he skipped eighth grade, then enrolled as a freshman at Apalachee after the academic year had begun, but did not attend regularly. During Colin Gray’s trial an investigator testified that he was aware his son’s mental health had declined, and had considered, but not arranged, counseling for him.

The hearing is expected to extend into next week.

The Associated Press contributed reporting