Colt Gray set for July 24 plea hearing in Georgia school shooting case

Court documents filed in Barrow County Superior Court set Colt Gray for a July 24 plea and sentencing hearing in the Apalachee High School shooting case. The hearing would be a non-negotiated plea, resolving guilt without a deal to shape the outcome in advance.

Gray, now facing 55 counts including malice murder, aggravated battery and aggravated assault, had previously pleaded not guilty. He was 14 when the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting in Winder, Georgia, left four people dead and seven others injured, and he has remained in a juvenile detention center since his arrest while the case has moved forward as an adult prosecution. Gray could face up to 30 years in prison on the second-degree murder charges and up to 180 years total.

A plea hearing at this stage would determine whether Gray accepts responsibility in court before a jury is seated. For the families of Christian Angulo, Mason Schermerhorn, Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall, a guilty plea would spare them the strain of a trial that had been set for Oct. 12 and would likely reduce the number of times they are asked to relive the shooting through testimony and victim impact statements. Judge Nicholas Primm wanted to avoid forcing the community through multiple rounds of those statements if a plea is entered.

Prosecutors have spent months preparing for trial while balancing the larger record of the case, including the March 2026 conviction of Gray’s father, Colin Gray, on 27 felony counts tied to the shooting. Prosecutors argued that Colin Gray ignored warning signs about his son’s behavior and gave him access to the rifle used in the attack. A plea by Colt Gray would settle the criminal charges against him and move the court directly to sentencing.

Judge Primm set the last week of July as the deadline for a possible plea, and a June 5 scheduling order gave Gray until July 15 to notify the court if he intended to plead guilty. That same order set Aug. 28 for pretrial motions and Sept. 11 for defense materials if the case continued to trial.

The case has also been moved out of Barrow County to Columbia County because of the intense publicity surrounding the shooting and the need for a fair and impartial jury. Prosecutors did not oppose the change, and pretrial proceedings will continue in Barrow County even though the trial itself will be held in the Augusta media market.