‘We have an active shooter at Apalachee High School.’ Sheriff’s office releases radio calls from Georgia high school shooting
By Ashley R. Williams, Alisha Ebrahimji, Dalia Faheid and Jamiel Lynch, CNN
(CNN) — Emergency services officials in Georgia have released 911 and police dispatch records from last week’s deadly Apalachee High School mass shooting that left two teachers and two students dead.
The emergency recordings and dispatch records, reviewed by CNN and obtained from the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal discussions between dispatchers and authorities reporting an active shooter at the high school, the number of people injured and calls from parents concerned about the safety of their children.
The audio recording and dispatch records recount the events when authorities allege Colt Gray, 14, fired an AR-15-style rifle inside the high school in Winder, Georgia, killing four. Nine others who were injured – eight students and one teacher – are expected to recover, authorities said.
“Active shooter!” an officer is heard yelling in one audio clip while speaking with a dispatcher, who repeats the phrase back to him. Another officer can be heard responding calmly, “Correct. We have an active shooter at Apalachee High School.”
In another recording, an officer, sounding slightly out of breath, tells a dispatcher a suspect is in custody and informs her to “roll EMS.” She is heard confirming emergency medical services were en route to the high school.
“A parent is on the phone with their child,” an officer urgently says in a different recording. “They are in the art room, locked up.”
A male caller told a dispatcher in another recording his daughter, a school psychologist, was working with a student in a trailer “next to where the shooting was happening.” He says his daughter tried to hide behind a desk with the student.
The man is heard saying, “I don’t know what the situation looks like – if there’s one trailer or a bunch of trailers – that helps, but I want them to be aware that she’s in a trailer and she can’t, you know, lock the doors and if they can check on the trailers … hopefully, they can check and get her out.”
The dispatcher confirmed whether the student was with the psychologist, to which the caller responds, “Yes, and she didn’t want to call, she didn’t want to make any noise.”
The deadly attack on September 4 marked the 45th school shooting in 2024 and the deadliest US school shooting since the March 2023 rampage at The Covenant School in Nashville that left six people dead.
Computer-aided dispatch reports released by Barrow County on Friday show the first call for last week’s shooting came in from a “RapidSOS” device at 10:22 a.m. ET. Two minutes later, authorities had the suspect’s name as “Colt” and one student was dead, according to the reports.
The suspect was “in custody, not injured” according to an entry made at 10:30 a.m., the reports show. Fifteen minutes later, the reports show one person was dead in a hallway and three were dead in another hallway.
Another call came in just after 11:45 a.m. from a woman who identified herself as Colt’s aunt. Sobbing, she told a Barrow County 911 operator she was afraid her nephew was involved in the school shooting at Apalachee High School.
“My mom just called me and said that Colt texted his mom, my sister and his dad that he was sorry, and they called the school and told the counselor to go get him immediately,” the woman tearfully told the operator. “And then she said she saw that there’s been a shooting, and I’m just worried it was him.”
The woman then shared her and her sister’s phone numbers with the 911 operator, adding that she’d prefer they call his mom first “because I’ve been trying to get through to somebody.”
“I’m sorry, give me just a second,” she said. “I’m just so worried what’s going to happen.”
Colt Gray’s mother, Marcee Gray, has said she called the school before the shooting began on September 4 and asked administrators to check on her son after he texted her saying, “I’m sorry, mom.”
That’s when a school counselor informed the mother her son had made references to school shootings, she told ABC News, prompting her and the teen’s grandfather to travel 200 miles from Fitzgerald to Winder, Georgia.
Colt Gray, who authorities say confessed to the Winder high school attack, is charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult. His attorney, Alfonso Kraft Jr., declined to comment Wednesday when reached by phone.
Colt Gray’s father, Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children after authorities accused him of knowingly allowing his son to have a weapon, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The second-degree murder charges apply to the two 14-year-olds killed, Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, according to the Barrow County district attorney. Two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, were also killed.
CNN has reached out to Colin Gray’s attorneys.
Colt Gray is not eligible for the death penalty if convicted because he is a juvenile, state Judge Currie Mingledorff said during a September 6 hearing. Colin Gray faces up to 180 years in prison if convicted on all 14 charges against him.
Gun was concealed in backpack, sheriff says
An unknown person called Apalachee High School on the day of the shooting warning of shootings at five schools, with Apalachee to be the first, according to authorities.
Colt Gray had ridden the bus to school that morning with the gun concealed in his backpack “as if it was a … school project,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told CNN affiliate WXIA.
The teenager was allowed to leave his second period Algebra 1 classroom with his belongings before trying to return to the room, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Thursday. But the door was locked, so he walked to the classroom next door and began shooting, according to a student.
Around 10:20 a.m., the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office learned of the gunfire and arrived at the high school a short while later with two school resource officers. The suspect surrendered after a resource officer confronted him and he was taken into custody, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
Colin Gray bought the gun allegedly used in the shooting in December 2023 as a holiday present for his son, according to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
During a search of the Grays’ home, authorities found documents they believe the suspect wrote referencing past school shootings, including the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a law enforcement source told CNN.
Barrow County School System administrators are planning for a “gradual reopening” of Apalachee High School the week of September 23, superintendent Dallas LeDuff said in an update Friday.
Mental health support will be available on campus, the district said, and final plans for reopening will come from the county school system.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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CNN’s Isabel Rosales, Lauren Mascarenhas, Celina Tebor, Eric Levenson, Dakin Andone, Meridith Edwards, Sara Smart, Nouran Salahieh, Steve Almasy, Scott Glover, Holly Yan, Jaide Timm-Garcia, Keith Allen, Rebekah Riess, Devon Sayers, Kelly McCleary, Emma Tucker, Alaa Elassar and Taylor Galgano contributed to this report.
