A text message, a phone call, then shots: New details raise questions about efforts to prevent the Georgia school massacre

CNN
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“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Those were the words Colt Gray texted to his mother on Wednesday morning before the deadliest school massacre in the United States this year occurred at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.

That text message was enough to prompt Marcee Gray to call her son's school and warn of an unspecified “extreme emergency.” Marcee Gray spoke with a school counselor for about 10 minutes, her father, Charles Polhamus, told CNN.

The emergency call came in at 9:50 a.m. that morning. Thirty minutes later, police responded to a shooting at the school.

The text message and the call were two signs that foreshadowed the chaos and violence to come, as the teenager used an assault rifle to kill four people – two teachers and two students – before turning himself in to police. Seven others were injured and two others suffered further injuries, authorities said.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told CNN there was no advance warning of a possible threat, but emerging details about the mother's phone call before the shooting raise questions about the school's and police's efforts to prevent the attack.

“We believe it was preventable – 100 percent,” Lisette Angulo, whose brother Christian was killed in the attack, said in a message to The New York Times about her and her family's perspective. “They knew about the situation in advance,” she said, “and did not take the proper measures to prevent this tragedy.”

That morning, Apalachee High School received another alert: An unknown caller said there would be shootings at five schools on Wednesday, and Apalachee would be first.

At around 9:45 a.m., during second period, Colt Gray left his Algebra 1 class.

Lyela Sayarath sat next to him in class and wasn't surprised when he left. “He usually skips school, so you never really know where he goes,” she told CNN.

Shortly after Gray left the classroom, a friend of Sayarath's – who has a similar name to Gray's – was dragged out of the classroom along with his backpack, Sayarath told CNN. When he returned to the classroom, he told her the school administration was “looking for the kid sitting next to you, not me.”

The “boy” the student was referring to was Gray. When Gray reappeared at the classroom door, another student, Bri Jones, stood in his way.

Jones' mother had always taught her to look out the door before opening it. When Colt Gray came back and knocked on the door, she looked – and saw him pull out a gun.

The teacher sat at her desk and asked for the door to be opened. She didn't know the student was carrying a gun. Jones stopped her.

“The shooter – he looked up,” she explained. “He looked at me, my teacher, and then there was someone in the hallway. He turned his head and just started shooting.”

Apalachee High School has repeatedly declined to comment on whether another student was mistakenly removed from the classroom in Gray's place.

“The school failed them. They could have prevented these deaths, but they didn't,” Lyela's mother, Rabecca Sayarath, told the Associated Press. “I really, really feel that way.”

Cristina Irimie celebrated her 53rd birthday on August 24, but the Apalachee High School math teacher was unable to celebrate her big day until Wednesday morning in class. She came to school with cake and pizza “so she could celebrate her birthday with her children,” Corneliu Caprar, a family friend, told CNN.

Irimie, an immigrant from Romania, was always happy and smiling in her adopted country. She had no biological children of her own – but she had her students. And she died in the shooting while protecting them.

“That's just the way she was – she was always in action,” Gabrielle Buth, a relative of hers, told CNN. “She died for her children, like any good mother would, like any good teacher would. She couldn't have any of her own, so these were her children.”

Nearby, second-grader Hazel Biondi was sitting in geometry class working on a math test when she heard a knock outside. One of her teachers, David Phenix, opened the classroom door to see what was going on – and was shot.

“The whole class ran to the back and that's when we realized my teacher had been shot. Then my other teacher tried to stop the bleeding,” Hazel told CNN. “She grabbed rags to stop the bleeding.”

Phenix managed to close the door before he fell to the ground, Hazel said.

“And then we heard more bangs and thought (the shooter) was coming back, so we turned off all the lights and were quiet,” she said.

They sat in the dark waiting for police to arrive while their injured teacher was still conscious. “He was still responsive and my other teacher kept telling him to talk, so we knew he was still alive,” she said.

When the danger was over, Hazel said it was difficult for students to leave the classroom because Phenix was lying outside the door. “We had to walk past his blood, and that was a sight we didn't want to see,” she said.

Phenix's daughter said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he was shot in the foot and hip. But after the surgery, his focus was elsewhere. “When he woke up, some of his first words were, 'Is everyone else OK?'” Katie Phenix wrote.

Hazel Biondi's mother, Nicole Biondi, 34, told CNN that Phenix saved lives on Wednesday. “If Mr. Phenix hadn't closed that door…” she said, her voice shaking. She praised him even more in a Facebook post that day. “He saved my baby. He saved my world,” she wrote.

In another class, Richard Aspinwall, a math teacher and assistant football coach, heard a commotion outside his room and went to see what was going on, family friend Julie Woodson said in a statement to CNN.

He was shot in the chest. His students tried in vain to help him.

“His students pulled Ricky back into the classroom and tried to use their own shirts to stop the bleeding and save him,” Woodson said. “If he hadn't gone out and taken the bullet … who knows what would have happened.”

Aspinwall, a 39-year-old father of two little girls, did not survive.

Also killed in the shooting were 14-year-olds Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both high school students.

The Barrow County Sheriff's Office was notified of the shooting at around 10:20 a.m. Just a week earlier, teachers at the school had been equipped with portable panic buttons.

At 10:26 a.m. the shooter was arrested.

When Colt Gray was confronted by a school security guard, he immediately surrendered to the officer and was taken into custody, officials said.

“It was me,” the shooter is said to have told investigators.

Around noon, Georgia authorities notified the public of the shooting: “GBI responded to a shooting at Apalachee HS in Barrow Co. We have agents on scene assisting local, state and federal law enforcement with the investigation. A suspect is in custody. We are urging anyone near the area to stay away while authorities investigate. More information to follow,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation posted on X.

Two days after the shooting, Colt Gray was arraigned on four counts of murder in a Barrow County courtroom. He refused to plead guilty to the charges against him.