Students wounded in Georgia school shooting testify in trial of shooter’s father

By Eric Levenson, Isabel Rosales, CNN

Winder, Georgia (CNN) — Four students wounded in the shooting at a Georgia high school in September 2024 testified on Tuesday about the harrowing moments they realized they had been shot.

Melany Delira-Castaneda, the first to testify, was 15 and in her ninth grade math class at Apalachee High School when her ear began ringing and she smelled smoke, she testified. She stood up and turned toward the door and saw Colt Gray, then 14, pointing a firearm into the classroom and firing indiscriminately, she said.

“I didn’t know I was shot, but I was. My body just told me to hold my arm,” Melany, now 16, said quietly through tears. “I was holding my arm and I hid between a pillar … between (the teacher’s) smartboard and my desk.”

After the shooting, police took her into the hallway, and Melany saw two students who had been killed lying on the floor. She ultimately went to the hospital with a gunshot wound in her left shoulder and continues to face emotional challenges.

“I feel like, just seeing what I saw that day just sticks with me, and not being able to trust certain people,” she said of the shooting’s effect on her.

Melany was one of several teenage shooting victims who testified Tuesday in the trial of Colin Gray, the father of Colt Gray, on charges of murder and manslaughter. Prosecutors allege Colin Gray bought his son the AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting despite previous warnings that his son was a danger to others, actions that constitute criminally reckless conduct.

The trial began Monday with opening statements and testimony from teachers, police and parents at the school that day who spoke about the horror of the attack, which left two students and two teachers dead. Nine other people were injured.

Colin Gray has pleaded not guilty to nearly 30 charges, including two counts each of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. His attorney said in opening statements Monday that Colin Gray was unaware his son was planning the shooting and had taken steps to try to get him help.

“When someone conceals a plan, deceives the people around them, acts independently, the law does not allow us to pretend that the people left behind should’ve seen through all of it,” Hobbs said.

Colin Gray’s trial is part of a broader push to hold more people accountable for a school shooting, including the shooter’s parents and responding law enforcement officers.

This case bears close similarities to the trials of James and Jennifer Crumbley, whose then-15-year-old son killed four students in 2021 at his high school in Oxford, Michigan. The Crumbley parents were each convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison. Their son was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Colin Gray has remained behind bars since his arrest a day after the shooting. If convicted, he faces 10 to 30 years in prison on each murder charge and 1 to 10 years on each manslaughter charge.

Colt Gray ultimately surrendered to police and has admitted to the shooting, according to authorities. Now 16, he has pleaded not guilty to 55 felony counts, including four counts of malice murder. A trial date has not been set.

What the student victims said

While the crux of the trial is on what Colin Gray did and didn’t do leading up to the shooting, the students’ testimony Tuesday laid out its dramatic violence and high emotional stakes.

In addition to Melany, fellow students Nautica Walton, Taylor Jones and Natalie Griffith testified about the moments they were shot during the attack. They were all in their ninth-grade math class when they said Colt Gray opened fire through the class window.

Nautica said she felt a hot spot on her leg and realized she had been shot, falling in and out of consciousness. First responders cut off her camo shorts to care for her that day, and a photo of the shorts was shown in court.

Because of the shooting, she can’t play sports anymore and is “very paranoid” and depressed, she said.

Taylor said she looked at the classroom door and saw a “kid standing there with a gun” whom she had never seen before. She jumped to the floor and soon realized she had been shot in the leg.

“After I got shot, I turned to my friend Landon and asked him to hold my hand because I was scared,” she said.

She was airlifted to a hospital and has spent months there due to multiple surgeries. She said she can’t play volleyball anymore and finds it hard to walk, and she missed an entire school year during her recovery.

Natalie said she was shot in her shoulder and hand. As she was taken out of the classroom to an ambulance, she saw Colt Gray in handcuffs and angrily cursed at him, she said.

“I saw red. I was very mad,” she said. “I remember yelling at him that we were kids.”

The defense declined to cross-examine any of the students.

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CNN’s Isabel Rosales reported from Winder, Georgia, while Eric Levenson reported and wrote this story in New York. CNN’s Sabrina Castro, Maxime Tamsett and Nicki Brown contributed to this report.