Apalachee High School shooter sentenced to life without parole

Colt Gray, the Georgia teenager who admitted to killing four people in the 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm handed down the sentence Tuesday in Barrow County.

Primm imposed the sentence after hearing three days of testimony from survivors, victims' families, investigators and mental health experts. Gray pleaded guilty last week to all 55 charges, including four counts of malice murder.

Gray admitted killing teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo during the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at Apalachee High School. Another teacher and eight students were wounded.

Because Gray was 14 at the time of the shooting, Georgia law prohibited prosecutors from seeking the death penalty. His sentence ranged from life with the possibility of parole to life without parole.

During his sentencing, Primm said that while the Supreme Court considered this sentence for youth only on the rarest occasions, Gray fit those parameters.

"I also recognize that you were failed by each of your parents, you were failed by your extended family, to a certain extent you were failed by a society that can't stop propagating this misguided value in online cultures and social media rather than making genuine interpersonal connections and relationships," Primm said. "But that failure does not absolve you from who you chose to idolize, worship, and become."

He said that Gray's actions weren't done out of fear, anger, or hatred. Instead, the judge argued that the shooting was done for "the infamy of it." Despite knowing that other mass shooters that he idolized were sentenced to life without parole, Gray made moves to plan the shooting, "contemplating the pain over and over," Primm told the teen.

"You wrote 'I want to make history. I want people to remember the pain I caused,' and there you succeeded," Primm said. "The pain that you visited upon this community is unlikely to disappear in my lifetime."

Gray was taken away by officers after the judge informed him of his rights to appeal the charges.

The sentencing hearing opened with emotional victim impact statements from survivors and relatives of those killed.

Family members described the lasting trauma left by the shooting, remembering the four victims and detailing how their deaths continue to affect parents, siblings, classmates and the broader Barrow County community.

Mason Schermerhorn's family remembered him as a caring teenager who "was so much more than a