A woman who said she was Colt Gray’s aunt called authorities about 90 minutes after the shooting at Apalachee High School, saying she was worried the shooter was her nephew.
The woman seemed to speak through tears as she expressed concern and asked that police get in touch with her sister, Colt’s mother. An audio recording of that call and other incoming calls to Barrow County emergency dispatchers on the morning of Sept. 4 were released to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other news outlets Friday under the state’s Open Records Act.
The recording of the call is timestamped 11:46 a.m., the morning of the shooting. That was nearly an hour and a half after the first 911 calls alerted authorities to an active shooter at the school in Winder. By that time Gray had been in police custody, but his name had not been released publicly.
“Hey, um, my mom just texted me and said that my nephew texted his mom and dad this morning and told them that he was really sorry and he goes to the high school, Apalachee,” said the woman who began to break down on the phone.
The caller gave the dispatcher her name, but only her first name, Annie, could be heard on the version of the recording that was made public Friday.
Gray’s aunt, Annie Polhamus Brown, who has said she lives in Florida, has spoken publicly to national press outlets about her nephew. Brown previously told The Washington Post that her sister, Marcee Gray, who is Colt’s mother, called the school about 30 minutes before the shooting with concerns about her son.
Four people were killed in the shooting. The victims were students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and two adults: assistant football coach Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and math teacher Cristina Irimie, 53. Nine others were also injured in the shooting, according to investigators.
Colt Gray, 14, a ninth grader at Apalachee, was arrested at the school and is being held in a state juvenile facility. He faces four counts of murder as well as other charges. The teen allegedly rode the school bus that morning and took the assault-style rifle into the school concealed in his backpack, according to new details released by the GBI.
Gray also was allegedly found with a knife in his possession and had a spotty school attendance record in the weeks prior to the Sept. 4 shooting, according to the GBI.
The woman calling Barrow County communications after the shooting, who said she was in Florida, told the dispatcher her sister and Colt’s father had received worrisome texts from the boy earlier that morning.
“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, and then she said she saw that there had been a shooting and I’m just worried it was him,” the caller said.
The dispatcher told the woman that they would have someone get in contact with her. The woman also gave her sister’s name and phone number. The recording identifies her sister as Marcee, but the rest of the name can’t be heard on the recording that has been partially redacted.
Colt Gray had previously been investigated in 2023 by local and federal law enforcement for allegedly threatening a school shooting but was not charged in that case.
In the days after the shooting, his father, Colin Gray, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children in connection to the Apalachee school shooting. Those charges “stem from Mr. Gray knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon,” GBI Director Chris Hosey has said.
