A Georgia teenager who killed four people and wounded nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., in September 2024 was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colt Gray, now 16, received the sentence in Barrow County Superior Court days after entering a guilty plea.
The two students killed were both 14 years old. Authorities said Gray used an AR-platform-style weapon in the attack.
Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm said sentencing juveniles to life without parole is unusual because of the defendants’ youth, but he described Gray as calculated and unrepentant.
“Planning, fantasizing about, visualizing and executing a school shooting puts you in a problematic place, it puts you in an unredeemable moral wasteland,” Primm said to Gray during the hearing. “You do not seem to be tormented by what you did.”
Gray’s father, Colin Gray, was convicted in March 2026 of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for making firearms available to his son. The elder Gray has not yet been sentenced. He faces a maximum of 180 years in prison, according to the court record.
The sentencing closes the criminal case against the shooter roughly 22 months after the attack.