Georgia School Shooter Gifted AR-15 For Christmas DESPITE Troubled Home Life and Warning Signs
Subjected to drug-addicted mother, abusive father, and questioned over a school shooting threat in 2023 already.
The City of Winder in Georgia is the latest statistic in the chronic rash of school shootings—and this time, the suspect is 14-year-old Colt Gray.
The boy, who killed two teachers and two peers at the Apalachee High School and injured another nine, is believed to have come from a home fraught with conflict and drug abuse—and guns.
Colt’s parents separated years ago but the conflict between the two continued resulting in a chaotic home life. The parents were noted to have called the cops on each other on more than one occasion.
There are also accounts of the family being evicted from at least one residential premises and Colt's mother, Marcee, being arrested for possession of drugs—and at one point keying his father's work vehicle.
Colt’s father, Colin, was not completely lily-white and has been accused by his father-in-law, Charles Polhamus, and Marcee of verbally abusing his family.
“He [Colt] was just a good kid but lived in a hostile environment. His dad beat up on him, I mean, I’m not talking about physical, but screaming and hollering, and he did the same thing to my daughter [Marcee],” Polhamus told the press.
His daughter’s qualms mirrored these accusations and were part of intermittent years-long updates on Linkedin.
“Finally separated from my abusive husband of almost 14 [years],” she wrote in December 2022.
Before that, the Grays’ new neighbors (after they moved to Jefferson, Georgia) observed that they were problematic from the day they arrived.
“There were nights where the mom would lock him (Colt) and his sister out of the house. And they would be banging on the back door, just screaming like ‘Mom! mom! mom!’ and crying. It was absolutely devastating,” Lauren Vickers told the New York Post.
Even with both parents in the house, the children’s neglect was apparent.
The youngest of the three children would go to the Vickers’ backyard asking for food with “no clean clothes.”
“I’m not exaggerating,” Lauren said.
“It was constant abuse. It’s very, very sad.”
Marcee, however, blamed the domestic conflict on Colin and in a May 2023 LinkedIn post, wrote:
“Hardest sh!t I’ve ever done but we’re in good hands. I packed myself and my babies up and relocated to my hometown in south GA. We are all good and my kids are thriving.”
Polhamus went on to say that despite his grandson’s turbulent upbringing, Colt was not prone to anger.
A search of the suspect’s home by the police after the Winder shooting, however, turned up evidence of premeditation.
In Colt’s room, they found written literature referencing the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Florida when a 19-year-old expelled student killed 17 and injured as many.
This discovery was congruent with a complaint made in the same month Marcee celebrated her decision to leave Colin (May 2023), that Colt had allegedly threatened a school shooting on the social internet platform, Discord.
“I’m committing a mass shooting and I’m waiting a good 2-3 years.”
“I can't kill myself yet, cause I’m not contributing anything to culture I need to go out knowing I did,” the account the FBI believed was Colt’s wrote.
In another post, an image depicting two firearms hosted the caption “I’m ready”.
The incident drew the police to Colt’s home and the then 13-year-old was noted to have denied any connection to the statements.
In the same interview, his father told the police that “Colt is allowed to use them [hunting rifles] when supervised but does not have unfettered access to them.”
Colin said he was “trying to teach [Colt] about firearms and safety and how to do it all and get him… interested in the outdoors” and that he knew “the seriousness of weapons and what they can do and how to use them and not use them.”
The interview also revealed that Marcee had left with the two younger siblings and that Colt had problems at a previous school in Jackson County
There, according to Colin, his son was being picked on and his peers were pinching him and touching him, but since he started at the Apalachee he was “a lot better.”
The Jackson County Sheriff's closed the investigation citing “the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be substantiated.”
Five months later, law enforcement visited the Gray household again after responding to a call for a wellness check by Marcee. She was reportedly concerned after not hearing from Colin, Colt, or his two siblings — then under the father’s supervision — in two weeks.
Officers carrying out the errand were presented with a document indicating that “a safety plan was put in place for him to have the children with him” which also noted that Marcee was not allowed near the children unsupervised.
The next month was when the keying incident took place. Marcee used her car keys to carve out the words “abuse” and “Liar” on a vehicle that Colin used for work.
Two days later she was arrested outside a Walmart in Winder on an outstanding warrant from another county. A search of her car produced methamphetamine, fentanyl, pain pills, and a glass pipe.
As such, an unnamed male accompanying her was also taken into custody.
While facing the police, Marcee would admit to damaging her husband’s vehicle claiming that she became enraged when Colin refused to let her see her children—two of which had been transferred back to their father’s custody by the child services after Macree failed a drug test.
She then spent a month in prison, cut a deal with the state, and was sentenced to five months probation.
The terms of said deal were that she contact her husband through a mediator and only when it concerned the ongoing divorce procedures.
Marcee’s friends insist that she underwent a significant change from the “sweet, caring, and smart woman” she was, to the person she is now.
“Something happened in that relationship that went wrong,” an unnamed individual told CNN News.
As a nod to this sentiment, Colt’s parents showed stability around the time of his birth in 2011 and bought a small farm in Barrow County, Georgia.
The plan then was to “create a non-profit, therapeutic riding school for local, underprivileged children,” according to a LinkedIn post by Marcee.
These plans fell through, partially due to her husband's three “major” back operations, and resulted in the said farm being sold.
A slew of lawsuits from landlords would follow including one eviction in July 2022 during which local authorities confiscated an AR15 and a hunting bow for safekeeping.
Despite the repeated visits of the Sheriff's office to the household and Colt’s problems with school, Colin would buy the teenager an AR-15 rifle for Christmas in 2023—the same firearm that killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School on September 4, 2024, and injured nine more.
Colin has since been taken into custody and charged with allowing his son access to his firearms—and by extension four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children in connection with the eight minors injured in the shooting.
Colt has since admitted to the crime telling law enforcement: “I did it.”
“I understand that Colt chose to do what he did, and I understand he has to pay for it,” the boy’s grandfather, Polhamus, said. “But I’m telling you, the environment that he lived in… you put somebody in a situation like that for 10 or 11 years, guess what’s gonna happen? Nothing good.”