Authorities were ‘actively searching’ for teenage suspect after a shooting alert was received at Winder High School in Georgia

Georgia: Authorities were “actively looking” for the teenage suspect on the morning of the high school shooting in Winder, Georgia, which left four people dead. The school had received a warning call from the suspect’s mother, but due to an error, they were unable to locate him in time, according to the Barrow County sheriff.

Colt Gray, 14, apologized to his mother, Marcee Gray, in a troubling, cryptic text before last week’s deadly shooting at Apalachee High School. This caused Marcee Gray to alert the school to possible problems.

“I apologize, mom,” the message said.

The mother then requested that officials check on her kid over the phone at the school. According to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, the hunt for Colt Gray began at that point, as reported by media affiliate WXIA.

Smith said, “She did talk to someone in the school, and we were actively looking for him.” “There were some messages back and forth, but I am not aware of her saying he is going to do this, or he has planned this,” the sheriff said.

When a resource officer went to search for the youngster, the sheriff said that both he and Colt Gray weren’t in the classroom since there was another student in the same class with “almost exactly the same name.”

“They think we’re looking for the student who went to the bathroom with him because they have almost the same name,” Smith said.

According to Smith, the cops were really talking to the other kid, but they believed they had caught up to Colt Gray in time. “The shooting starts as we’re trying to figure out what’s going on,” Smith said to WXIA.

According to the authorities, Colt killed two instructors and two pupils inside the high school by firing an AR-15-style weapon. According to officials, the eight children and one instructor among the nine other wounded parties should make a full recovery.

The commotion and terror that occurred both inside the school when an active shooter was reported and outside when concerned parents got terrified messages from their teens are captured in recently discovered emergency tapes and dispatch data from the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office.

The horrific assault on September 4th was the 45th school shooting of 2024 and the worst school shooting in the United States since the Nashville, Tennessee, spree in March 2023.

Colt Gray, who is accused of confessing to the Winder high school assault, will face an adult trial on four charges of felony murder. When contacted by phone on Wednesday, Alfonso Kraft Jr., his attorney, refused to comment.

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Colin Gray, his father, has been charged with eight charges of cruelty to minors, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and two counts of second-degree murder after it was alleged by the police that he had intentionally given his son a firearm. The lawyers for Colin Gray have been contacted by media.

“Apalachee High School has an active shooter.”

According to the Washington Post, around 9:50 a.m. ET on the morning of the massacre, Marcee Gray made a 10-minute call to the school.

The student Lyela Sayarath, who was seated next to Colt Gray in Algebra 1, had informed the media that Colt Gray had left his class at around 9:45 a.m. ET.

She said that someone who subsequently showed up to the session in search of Colt Gray mistook him for another pupil. Lyela said, “An administrator comes in asking for the kid that sits next to me but thinks he’s my friend.”

A “RapidSOS” device made the first call for the shooting at 10:22 a.m. ET, according to computer-aided dispatch data made public by Barrow County on Friday.

In one audio tape, an officer can be heard screaming, “Active shooter!” to a dispatcher, who then repeats the words back to him. With composure, another cop can be heard saying, “Correct.” At Apalachee High School, there is an active shooter.

According to the accounts, two minutes later, investigators identified the culprit as “Colt” and confirmed the death of one pupil.

The reports state that the culprit was “in custody, not injured” around 10:30 a.m. Reports indicate that one individual was found dead in one corridor and three dead in another, fifteen minutes later.

A little breathless, an officer urges the dispatcher to “roll EMS.” She may be heard stating that paramedics were on their way to the high school.

“I’m just concerned that he did it.”

Just after 11:45 a.m. ET that morning, a lady identifying herself as Colt’s aunt made an emotional 911 call after learning of the text he had sent. According to a tape made public on Friday, she sobbed as she informed a Barrow County 911 operator that she feared her nephew was a participant in the Apalachee High School massacre.

The lady informed the operator, “My mom just called me and said that Colt texted his mom, my sister, and his dad that he was sorry. They called the school and told the counselor to go get him right away.” “And then she said, ‘I’m just worried that it was him, because I saw that there was a shooting.”

After giving the 911 operator her and her sister’s phone numbers, the lady said she would rather that they contact his mother first “because I’ve been trying to get through to somebody.”

“I simply can’t stop worrying about what could happen,” the lady said to the operator.

Marcee Gray told ABC News that she and the teen’s grandfather drove 200 miles from Fitzgerald to Winder, Georgia, after learning from a school counselor that her son had mentioned school shootings.

Parents who were worried said that their kids were in danger.
The new recordings show that on the day of the shooting, worried about their children’s safety, parents contacted 911.

In one clip, an officer can be heard frantically saying, “A parent is on the phone with their child.” “They’re locked up in the art room.”

In another clip, a man caller informed the dispatcher that his daughter, a school psychologist, was seeing a pupil in a trailer “next to where the shooting was happening.” He said that his daughter attempted to conceal with the student behind a desk.

The guy can be heard stating, “I want them to know that she’s in a trailer and she can’t lock the doors and if they can check on the trailers… hopefully, they can check and get her out.”

The caller answers, “Yes, and she didn’t want to call; she didn’t want to make any noise,” when the dispatcher confirms that the student is with the psychologist.

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