Our inability to prevent mass shootings is tragically illustrated by the case of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old boy accused of killing two students, two teachers, and wounding 11 at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, in September, 2024. His story illustrates the societal effects of a thrown-away child, the need to heed warning signs of potential violence, and the vital need to provide immediate mental health care to thwart it. All were united in their failure — parents, schools, child protective services, and police department — to provide emergent psychiatric care to a child who was homicidal, suicidal, and demonstrating psychotic symptoms.1
Over a three-year period when Colt was repeatedly in emotional crisis, institutions responsible for protecting children and the public — Georgia child welfare workers, four school systems, three county sheriff departments, and two local police agencies — interacted with Colt and his family, but failed to intervene before he became violent. Somehow, despite state caseworkers monitoring his family, Colt remained isolated, not even attending any 8th grade classes.
Predictably, Colt’s childhood was plagued by two parents afflicted with drug and alcohol addiction. The family was evicted from their home, and after Colt’s parents separated, he bounced between various houses. His grandmother said that Colt grew up in a household where his parents screamed and physically beat each other. Experiencing frequent dislocations, Colt attended at least six schools in five districts, over a five-year period.
As early as 2021, shortly after starting sixth grade, Colt had used a tablet while at school to search for ways to kill his father.2 A school counselor called, and two school resource officers showed up to speak with Colt and his mother, but it is unclear if a report was ever made. This was yet another missed opportunity by the school system to get Colt the psychiatric care he so desperately needed and craved.
Before he enacted his violence and in spite of “begging for months” for mental health care, Colt was abandoned by his parents and the system.3 Similar to other mass shooters, Colt was described as quiet, had few friends, was ridiculed in school, and suffered undiagnosed psychiatric illness.4
A year prior to the shooting, the FBI pursued a tip about Colt’s online threats of being a school shooter. On the social messaging app Discord, Colt allegedly posted a Russian profile name that translated to the name of the gunman who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook. The same user also showed images of a gun. A police deputy visited Colt’s home, where he was now living with his father, Colin Grey. The deputy questioned Colin and Colt; Colt denied writing the threats.
Colt’s mother reported that he had talked at home about his fascination with school shootings for more than a year before the deadly shooting. Colt also mentioned Nikolas Cruz to his grandmother, and explained that Nikolas had shot 17 people in Parkland High School in Florida in 2018, when Colt was 8. Colt kept a shrine of 15 photos behind his computer desk of Nikolas.
In such cases where a child’s parents are tragically dysfunctional and battling mental health issues of their own, one hopes that other family members, schools, counselors, and caseworkers show concern and can fill in to get vital psychiatric care for children suffering with mental health issues. Although his grandmother pressed the schools, counselors, and caseworkers to help Colt for years, Colt did not receive the psychiatric care he deserved. Why?
In December 2023, seven months after law enforcement talked to Colt and his father about the online threats, Colin Gray bought the rifle used in the mass shooting for Colt as a gift and then took Colt to shooting ranges. In 2024, Colin also bought Colt a tactical vest, ammunition, and a rifle scope. Colt’s father was literally arming his son to conduct a mass shooting. No one apparently, including Colt’s mother, intervened to insist that Colt’s father not buy him a gun.
Meanwhile, Colt’s dysfunctional home life was getting worse. In a methamphetamine high, his mother threatened to kill him. Three weeks before the shooting, Colt’s grandmother reported that she told him by phone to hide in his room after he called to tell her that his mother was acting violent and threatening again. Colt used the AR-style assault weapon his father had given him to push his mother out of his room. The grandmother believed this was the moment that her grandson stopped believing his life would get better. Are the parents of mass shooters unconsciously using their child as a proxy to express their rage and as a consolation to fill their emptiness by initiating their child into a cycle of abuse?
In the months leading up to the shooting, Colt’s mental health deteriorated. Colt wrote in a crumpled page from his notebook , “I hate my life, I’m just about at my breaking point, I’m depressed and eager to die.”5In a pivotal moment, just days before the shooting, Colt’s father failed to take him to an inpatient stay that his grandmother had secured.
In January, 2025, following the Apalachee shooting, the Barrow County schools approved to install weapons detection systems in all high schools with implementation expected to cost around $700,000. We attempt to find technological solutions to human problems that run much deeper. The worst place for these checkpoints seem to be in our schools, which companies view as large markets. School metal detectors, which are disruptive, alienating, and have a racially disparate impact on students of color, are in keeping with a broken approach to student safety and well-being. The United States has more police officers than social workers in our schools. Ample research suggests that metal detectors do not improve school safety and are unlikely to stop school shootings.6 Less effort should be invested in metal detectors, and more effort placed in connecting with disenfranchised children and securing psychiatric care for children with undiagnosed mental health illness.
link