He Killed Four for Fame in an Online World That Idolizes Mass Shooters
Colt Gray was 14 when he opened fire at his Georgia high school in September 2024, killing two teachers and two students; on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, a judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors said the massacre was a step in the teenager’s pursuit of lasting fame inside an online “true crime community” that venerates mass shooters.
Colt Gray was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, that killed four people, days after the teenager pleaded guilty to all 55 counts against him, including four counts of malice murder, NBC News reported. Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm, addressing Gray, now 16, said, “You do not seem to be tormented by what you did, you seem to relish following in the footsteps of the murderers you idolize,” according to NBC News.
Prosecutors said the notoriety was the point. Gray, who was 14 when he opened fire on Sept. 4, 2024, had spent more than a year online idolizing mass killers and courting the attention of a loose network of young people who treat such attacks as entertainment, and the district attorney argued the massacre was staged to win their admiration, PBS NewsHour reported. “The plan was ultimate and lifelong fame inside of the TCC,” the prosecutor, District Attorney Brad Smith, told the court, referring to the online “true crime community.” “The shooting was not the culmination of the plan. The shooting was just one of the steps of the plan,” Smith said.
Four killed in a classroom and a hallway
The attack killed two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, CBS News reported. Another teacher and eight students were wounded, seven of them struck by gunfire, according to NBC News. Gray, who was charged as an adult, entered a non-negotiated guilty plea before the sentencing hearing, PBS NewsHour reported.
A killing rehearsed for an audience
Investigators testified that Gray had for more than a year discussed carrying out a school shooting with others in the online true crime community, a group of young people fascinated by mass attacks, NBC News reported. More than a year before the shooting, he wrote on the messaging platform Discord, “(I) wanna make history to put it short,” and “I want people to remember the pain I caused and research me for hours,” according to CNN. He was fixated on Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people at a Parkland, Florida, high school in 2018; in a message days before his own attack, Gray wrote, “My love for Nik has formed into something in which I can find no other resort that can prove my love and affection towards him,” CNN reported.
‘I love this community so much’
The pursuit of attention did not end with the killings. From a youth detention center, Gray asked his mother to look up what people were saying about him online and was elated when she described the “fan art” that admirers had drawn of him, CNN reported. “I love this community so much,” he told her, according to CNN. In one recorded jail call, Gray boasted that he had eclipsed Thomas Crooks, who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in 2024: “Can you believe it, Mom? I took over Thomas Crooks in popularity. Take that,” and in another he said he was “in the big leagues,” comments prosecutors said reflected his hunger to be ranked among mass killers, CNN reported.
Warnings that reached back to 2023
The online warning signs preceded the massacre by more than a year. In May 2023, sheriff’s deputies in Jackson County, Georgia, visited the family’s home after the FBI passed along a tip about anonymous online threats to carry out a school shooting, threats that included photographs of guns, NBC News reported. Gray, then 13, denied making them and investigators could not substantiate the tip; his father, Colin Gray, bought him an AR-15-style rifle later that year, according to NBC News. Gray later acknowledged that he had written the 2023 threat inside an online true crime group, saying, “I knew I wasn’t going to do it. It was more of just I liked the attention,” CNN reported.
A father convicted, an online world untouched
The case has run alongside a rare prosecution of a parent. In March 2026, a jury convicted Colin Gray on all 27 counts against him, including two counts of second-degree murder, over allegations that he armed his son despite the warning signs; he was due to be sentenced this week, CNN reported. But the sentence handed to Colt Gray cannot reach the online world he said he was performing for. Reporting on the true crime community has documented how its members trade images and lore glorifying mass shooters, a milieu that rewards atrocity with exactly the notoriety its most dangerous participants seek, according to CNN. In Gray’s own messages, entered into the court record, prosecutors said, the audience was the point.