Student Colt Gray may only be 14 but he found a way to seriously confuse all the adults before opening fire with an assault rifle and killing four people. Despite all the previous warning signs, staff at Apalachee High School were caught totally unprepared for a mass shooting. They apparently weren’t aware they had two pupils with nearly identical names. Knowing that in advance, along with a few other related facts, might have saved lives.
Which student is which?
Another student, Kolton Gray, became the subject of a manhunt while Colt Gray was in the bathroom loading his assault rifle. When Marcee Gray called the counselor the family worked with regularly, and told him her son texted her saying “I’m sorry,” he claims he took action.
He’d already been notified by email that Colt’s teacher said he had been talking about school shootings and acting strange. Apparently, he called the office. They went frantically looking for Kolton.
Complicating things a whole lot further, there was another fact Colt seems to have used to his strategic advantage. The student with the similar name sat next to the would-be killer, in the class Colt left to get his rifle ready. Probably by alphabetic order.
It seems Colt waited until Kolton was also out of the room. “He asked to go up front and speak to someone at the front, and when you do that you take your belongings with you,” Sheriff Jud Smith explained.
Seconds after Colton was clear of the classroom, in the bathroom loading his weapon, office staff came in and started searching Kolton’s backpack.
They didn’t realize it was the wrong student until Colton opened fire a few minutes later. A timeline shows the hunt for Kolton began just after 9 a.m. when they got the call from Marcee Gray.
Dad charged too
Colt’s father Colin Gray has been charged with a whole set of matching crimes. If convicted on all of them he faces up to 280 years in jail. For all practical purposes, both father and son are looking at life in prison. It’s hard to imagine that school administration was unaware of the student with a phonetically matching name.
Especially when Colt had been on police and FBI radar for more than a year. Both Colt and Colin had been interviewed over threats of a school shooting. Dad went and bought Colt the assault rifle to “toughen him up.”
To downplay the embarrassment of searching for the wrong student, administrators counter that at least they were in the general vicinity when things went critical. Armed resource officers “were able to confront the shooter just one minute and six seconds after he opened fire, killing two students and two teachers,” the sheriff relates.
“Despite the error, the close proximity of school staff and resource officers to the scene of the shooting also meant that they could get urgent medical care to the victims.”
How a student could get the full size assault rifle into the classroom is no longer a mystery. Colt brought it in himself, it wasn’t stashed somewhere or given to him by someone else.
He simply packed the weapon in his backpack so it wouldn’t be conspicuous. This tragedy should have been prevented, incompetence only made things worse. It’s a miracle there weren’t more student bodies.
