Colt Gray set for plea hearing in Apalachee High shooting case

A July 24 plea hearing for Colt Gray could mark the first step toward a fuller record of the Apalachee High School shooting, as families continue waiting for answers about warning signs, school safety and the failures that came before the attack. Court documents show the Barrow County Superior Court proceeding is scheduled as a non-negotiated plea and sentencing hearing, which means Gray may abandon the not-guilty plea he entered to 55 felony charges, including murder.

Gray was 14 when the Sept. 4, 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, left two teachers and two students dead and injured nine others. The campus, about an hour east of Atlanta, became the center of a community-wide lockdown and grief that spread across the Barrow County School District. District leaders closed all schools for three days after the shooting, then brought students back to Apalachee High for half-days on Sept. 24, 2024.

The hearing comes just days after Judge Nicholas Primm granted the defense’s request to move Gray’s trial out of Barrow County. The case is now expected to be tried in Columbia County, with jury selection tentatively set to begin in October and the trial estimated to last about three weeks. Gray, now 16, faces the prospect of resolving the case before a jury is seated, after months in which the prosecution and defense had been preparing for a high-profile murder trial in north Georgia.

The case has also deepened the legal fallout for Gray’s family. Colin Gray, Colt Gray’s father, was convicted in March 2026 of second-degree murder and more than two dozen other charges tied to the same shooting. His conviction made him at least the third parent in the United States to be found guilty in connection with a child’s alleged mass shooting. He is due to be sentenced in late July.

For Barrow County, the hearings now scheduled in two separate courtrooms may bring the case closer to a final accounting of how a 14-year-old reached a school campus, opened fire and killed four people. Whether the July 24 proceeding becomes a plea, a sentencing, or both, it will shape what the public learns next about one of Georgia’s deadliest school shootings.