(CNN) – On the morning of the high school shooting in Winder, Georgia, that left four people dead, authorities were “actively searching” for the teenage suspect after the school received a warning call from his mother, but there was confusion and they were unable to reach him. to him quickly enough, according to the Barrow County sheriff.
Before last week’s mass shooting at Apalachee High School, 14-year-old Colt Gray apologized to his mother, Marcee Gray, in an alarming and cryptic text message that led the woman to warn the school that something could be wrong.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” the text message said.
The mother then called the school and asked administrators to check on her son. That’s when authorities began searching for Colt Gray, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told CNN affiliate WXIA.
“She talked to someone at the school, and we were actively looking for him,” Smith said. “I’m not aware that she said he was going to do this, or that she had planned it, but there were some messages back and forth,” the sheriff added.
A resource officer went to look for the boy, but there was another student in the same class with “almost the same name,” and neither he nor Colt Gray were inside the classroom at the time, according to the sheriff.
“He went to the bathroom with a student who has almost the same name, that’s who they thought we were looking for,” Smith said.
Smith said the officers thought they had caught up to Colt Gray in time, but they were actually talking to the other student. “As we’re trying to figure out what’s going on, the shooting starts,” Smith told WXIA.
Authorities allege Colt fired an AR-15-style rifle inside the high school, killing two teachers and two students. Nine other people were injured, eight students and a teacher, and are expected to recover, authorities said.
Newly obtained emergency recordings and dispatch logs from the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office capture the chaos and panic that unfolded both inside the school when an active shooter was reported and outside of the school when concerned parents received messages from panic text from your teens.
The deadly Sept. 4 attack marked the 45th school shooting in 2024 and the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since the March 2023 attack at The Covenant School in Nashville.
Colt Gray, who authorities say confessed to the attack at Winder High School, is charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult. His attorney, Alfonso Kraft Jr., declined to comment Wednesday when he was contacted by phone.
His father, Colin Gray, has been charged with two counts of manslaughter, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children after authorities accused him of knowingly allowing his son to have a gun, according to the Bureau Georgia Research Institute. CNN has contacted Colin Gray’s lawyers.
On the morning of the attack, a 10-minute call was made from Marcee Gray’s phone to the school at 9:50 a.m. ET, the Washington Post reported.
Colt Gray had left his Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. ET, student Lyela Sayarath, who was sitting next to him in class, previously told CNN.
She said a person who later came to class looking for Colt Gray mistook him for another student. “An administrator comes in asking about the boy sitting next to me, but he mistakes him for… my friend,” Lyela said.
The first call about the attack came from a “RapidSOS” device at 10:22 a.m. ET, computer-aided dispatch reports released by Barrow County on Friday show.
“Active attacker!” an officer is heard shouting in an audio recording as he speaks to a dispatcher, who repeats the phrase. Another officer is heard calmly responding, “correct, we have an active shooter at Apalachee High School.”
Two minutes later, authorities had the suspect’s name as “Colt” and a student was reportedly dead.
As of 10:30 a.m., the suspect was “in custody, not injured,” reports show. Fifteen minutes later, reports show one person was dead in one hallway and three were dead in another hallway.
An officer, sounding slightly breathless, asks the dispatcher to “send EMS.” She is heard confirming that EMS were on their way to the high school.
When a woman who identified herself as Colt’s aunt learned of the text message he had sent, she made a tearful 911 call that morning, shortly after 11:45 a.m. ET. Crying, he told a Barrow County 911 operator that he feared his nephew was involved in the shooting at Apalachee High School, according to a recording released Friday.
“My mom just called me and said Colt texted his mom, my sister and his dad saying he was sorry, and they called the school and told the counselor to get him right away,” the woman said. to the operator. “And then she said that she saw that there was a shooting, and she just worries that it was him.”
The woman then shared her and her sister’s phone number with the 911 operator, adding that she would prefer they call her mom first “because I’ve been trying to get in touch with someone.”
“I’m so worried about what’s going to happen,” the woman told the operator.
Meanwhile, a school counselor had informed Marcee Gray that her son had made references to school shootings, she told ABC News, prompting her and the teen’s grandfather to travel more than 300 miles from Fitzgerald to Winder, Georgia.
Parents called 911 on the day of the shooting worried about their children’s safety, new recordings reveal.
“A father is on the phone with his son,” an officer says urgently in a recording. “They are in the art room, locked in.”
A male caller told a dispatcher in another recording that his daughter, a school psychologist, was working with a student in a trailer “next to where the shooting was occurring.” He said her daughter tried to hide behind a desk with the student.
“I want you to know that she is in a trailer and can’t lock the doors and if you can check the trailers… I hope you can check and get her out,” the man is heard saying.
The dispatcher confirmed if the student was with the psychologist, to which the man responds, “yes, and she didn’t want to call, she didn’t want to make any noise.”
Contributing to this report were Isabel Rosales, Andy Rose, Lauren Mascarenhas, Celina Tebor, Eric Levenson, Dakin Andone, Meridith Edwards, Sara Smart, Nouran Salahieh, Steve Almasy, Scott Glover, Holly Yan, Jaide Timm-Garcia, Keith Allen, Rebekah Riess , CNN’s Devon Sayers, Kelly McCleary, Emma Tucker, Alaa Elassar and Taylor Galgano.
