Mother of Georgia shooting suspect said she called school before attack, report says
WINDER, Ga. − The mother of the 14-year-old boy charged with killing four people at a rural Georgia high school said she alerted the school counselor the morning of the shooting that there was an "extreme emergency" and her son needed to be found, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
Law enforcement received reports of shots fired at Apalachee High School around 10:20 a.m. Wednesday. The attack left two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and two students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, dead and nine others injured. The call log obtained by the Post shows Marcee Gray, the alleged shooter's mother, made a 10-minute phone call to the school about half an hour before the shooting is believed to have started.
“I was the one that notified the school counselor at the high school,” Gray said in a text message to her sister, Annie Brown, according to a screenshot of the conversation obtained by the Post. “I told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find [my son] to check on him.”
Brown declined to elaborate what prompted Gray to warn the school, but Charles Polhamus, the suspect's grandfather, told the New York Post Saturday that Gray rushed to Winder, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, after getting a text message from her son that read “I’m sorry, mom."
Brown and Polhamus both declined to comment when reached by USA TODAY. Gray and officials from the Barrow County School System did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, was charged with four counts of felony murder and is being held without bond at a juvenile detention facility. His father, Colin Gray, 54, was also arraigned Friday on four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. Neither son nor father entered a plea or requested bond during their respective hearings.
Contributing: Christopher Cann, Eve Chen, Claire Thornton, USA TODAY