A prosecutor said no charges will be filed against the Apalachee shooter's mother. New jailhouse calls played in court show she discussed mass shooter images with her son.
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The mother of a student killed in the 2024 Apalachee High School shooting told a courtroom the gunman's mother should be in jail. Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son Mason died in the Winder, Georgia attack, spoke during sentencing proceedings as previously unheard jailhouse calls were played.
Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said prosecutors found no legal basis to charge Marcee Gray. “At the end of the day, she did not have custody of Colt, she did not have proximity to Colt, and she was not the one that provided him the firearms,” Smith said earlier this year. After Colt Gray was sentenced Tuesday to life without parole plus 20 years, Smith repeated the decision. Two days later, the gunman's father, Colin Gray, received a 15-year sentence for purchasing the AR-15-style rifle used in the attack. His lawyer plans to appeal.
Smith said Marcee Gray had taken some steps to have firearms removed from the home. “She took some steps – not many – but some steps to actually have the firearms removed, or ask the father to do that,” he told CNN. “So we don't believe we have the ability under the proximate cause (law) of Georgia to charge her with what happened at Apalachee.”
Marcee Gray lost custody of her children following allegations of drug abuse and child neglect before the shooting.
During the sentencing hearing, prosecutors played recordings of jailhouse conversations between Marcee and Colt Gray that had not been released publicly. In the calls, the pair discussed drawings shared online that portrayed Colt alongside other mass shooters.
“I'm printing out, like, all of these pictures, because seriously, they are extremely cute,” Marcee Gray told her son while referring to images from what prosecutors described as the True Crime Community.
When Colt asked her to bring certain pictures, Marcee appeared aware they could raise concerns at the youth detention centre. “Just looking for any other ones that would not set off the alarm bells,” she said.
Stephen Baker, a counsellor at the detention facility, confirmed juvenile inmates are not allowed to possess photographs of school shooters. When asked whether trying to bring less obvious images into the facility would amount to bypassing the rules, Baker replied, “It would be.”
In another call, Marcee mentioned a drawing showing Colt alongside the Columbine shooters and Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz in the style of a Weezer album cover. “Oh, wow, I need that printed out and brung up here,” Colt responded.
In text messages to CNN, Marcee Gray said she did not initially understand the nature of the Reddit and Discord pages her son wanted her to view. She insisted her only aim was to maintain contact with him.
“My tone and enunciation during many of these calls could be described as enthusiastic, encouraging, and animated. It should go without saying that in an even semi-normal parent-child relationship, I would immediately address the extreme inappropriateness of the subject, as well as having him speak to a mental health professional about his extreme interest in mass shootings,” she wrote.
“This situation was as far from normal as humanly possible. I was simply doing whatever I could to keep the line of communication open and keep my son alive. I am beyond remorseful for the pain I caused everyone through my actions and will spend the rest of my life in heartbreaking regret for so, so many things.”
Baker said the Department of Juvenile Justice ended communication between Marcee and Colt once it discovered the nature of the conversations and materials. The state later terminated her parental rights and placed Colt in foster care while he remained in custody.
John Acevedo, professor of practice and associate dean at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, said Marcee Gray's actions after her son's arrest could not be linked legally to the school shooting. “Beforehand, you can be charged with encouraging someone to commit the crime or with aiding them, but she made these comments well after he was in prison,” Acevedo said. “They're definitely distasteful, but not criminal.”
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