() – The morning of the shooting at a high school in Winder, Georgia, that left four people dead, authorities were “actively searching” for the teenage suspect after the school received a warning call from his mother, but there was a mix-up and they couldn’t get to him fast enough, according to the Barrow County sheriff.
Before last week’s mass shooting at Apalachee High School, 14-year-old Colt Gray apologized to his mother, Marcee Gray, in a startling, cryptic text message that prompted the woman to warn the school that something might be wrong.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” the text message said.
The mother then called the school and asked administrators to check on her son. That’s when authorities began searching for Colt Gray, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told affiliate WXIA.
“She spoke to someone at the school, and we were actively looking for him,” Smith said. “I’m not aware of her saying he was going to do this, or that he had planned it, but there were some messages back and forth,” the sheriff added.
A resource officer went to look for the boy, but there was another student in the same class with “almost the same name,” and neither he nor Colt Gray were in the classroom at the time, according to the sheriff.
“He went into the bathroom with a student who has almost the same name, that’s who they thought we were looking for,” Smith said.
Smith said officers thought they had caught up with Colt Gray in time, but they were actually talking to the other student. “As we’re trying to figure out what’s going on, the shooting starts,” Smith told WXIA.
Authorities allege Colt fired an AR-15-style rifle inside the high school, killing two teachers and two students. Nine other people were injured — eight students and one teacher — and are expected to recover, authorities said.
Newly obtained emergency recordings and dispatch records from the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office capture the chaos and panic that unfolded both inside the school when an active shooter was reported and outside when worried parents received panicked text messages from their teenagers.
The deadly Sept. 4 attack marked the 45th school shooting in 2024 and the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since the March 2023 attack at The Covenant School in Nashville.
Colt Gray, who authorities say confessed to the attack at Winder High School, is charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult. His attorney, Alfonso Kraft Jr., declined to comment Wednesday when reached by phone.
His father, Colin Gray, has been charged with two counts of manslaughter, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children after authorities accused him of knowingly allowing his son to have a gun, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. has reached out to Colin Gray’s attorneys.
On the morning of the attack, a 10-minute call was made from Marcee Gray’s phone to the school at 9:50 a.m. ET, the Washington Post reported.
Colt Gray had left his Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. ET, student Lyela Sayarath, who was sitting next to him in class, previously told .
She said a person who later came to the class looking for Colt Gray mistook him for another student. “An administrator comes in asking about the kid sitting next to me, but he mistakes him for … my friend,” Lyela said.
The first call about the attack came from a “RapidSOS” device at 10:22 a.m. ET, computer-assisted dispatch reports released by Barrow County on Friday show.
“Active shooter!” one officer is heard yelling on an audio recording while speaking to a dispatcher, who repeats the phrase. Another officer is heard calmly responding, “correct, we have an active shooter at Apalachee High School.”
Two minutes later, authorities had the suspect’s name as “Colt” and one student was dead, according to reports.
By 10:30 a.m., the suspect was “in custody, not injured,” reports show. Fifteen minutes later, reports show one person was dead in one hallway and three were dead in another hallway.
An officer, sounding slightly out of breath, asks the dispatcher to “send EMS.” She is heard confirming that emergency medical services (EMS) were on their way to the high school.
When a woman who identified herself as Colt’s aunt learned of the text message he had sent, she made a tearful call to 911 that morning shortly after 11:45 a.m. ET. Crying, she told a Barrow County 911 operator that she feared her nephew was involved in the Apalachee High School shooting, according to a recording released Friday.
“My mom just called me and said that Colt texted his mom, my sister and his dad saying that he was sorry, and they called the school and told the counselor to get him right away,” the woman told the operator. “And then she said that she saw that there was a shooting, and I’m just worried that it was him.”
The woman then shared her and her sister’s phone numbers with the 911 operator, adding that she would prefer they call her mom first “because I’ve been trying to get a hold of someone.”
“I’m so worried about what’s going to happen,” the woman told the operator.
Meanwhile, a school counselor had informed Marcee Gray that her son had made references to school shootings, she told ABC News, prompting her and the teen’s grandfather to travel more than 180 miles from Fitzgerald to Winder, Georgia.
Parents called 911 on the day of the shooting out of concern for their children’s safety, new recordings show.
“A father is on the phone with his son,” an officer says urgently on a recording. “They are in the art room, locked in.”
A male caller told a dispatcher in another recording that his daughter, a school psychologist, was working with a student in a trailer “next to where the shooting was happening.” He said his daughter tried to hide behind a desk with the student.
“I want you to know that she is in a trailer and she cannot lock the doors and if you can check the trailers… I hope you can check and get her out,” the man is heard saying.
The dispatcher confirmed whether the student was with the psychologist, to which the man replied, “Yes, and she didn’t want to call, she didn’t want to make any noise.”
Contributing to this report were Isabel Rosales, Andy Rose, 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 , ‘s Devon Sayers, Kelly McCleary, Emma Tucker, Alaa Elassar and Taylor Galgano.
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