Georgia community grapples with questions, grief and a mass shooting

WINDER, Georgia ‒ Snip. Twist. Straighten.

"This is something you hear about that happens somewhere else,” said Sherry Miller, the owner of a local flower shop as she tied and then tossed a newly made blue-and-gold ribbon bow to the table in front of her. "You don’t imagine it could ever be here."

The bows, sharing the same colors as Apalachee High School, mark the memories of those who died in a tragedy at the school that's brought unexpected attention and unanswered questions throughout the community and the nation.

A week ago, authorities say, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Georgia, opened fire with a rifle, killing two math teachers and two of his fellow classmates. The attack shattered residents' sense of safety, and the intervening days have been filled with grief and loss.

The questions range from why the gunman chose to attack a school he’d only attended for a month to whether police investigating multiple tips that he’d threatened a school shooting didn’t do more to intervene. Other questions linger about failings of the boy's parents, counselors, and other adults around him.

"I don’t even know how this even happens. I guess it’s just the way times are now," Miller, 68, said of the killings, her hands decisively snipping with yellow-handled scissors before twisting another bow.

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But if there's fear of the unknown spreading across Barrow County, population 90,000, there's also hope and faith.

Every day since the shooting, Miller and her daughter Paige Stinchcomb have made bows for their neighbors, with proceeds benefitting the local community foundation. The door chime at their floral-and-gift shop tinkles every few minutes as another customer and friend comes in to collect their $10 bows.

Hundreds of customers have signed up to buy bows ‒ so many there’s a weeklong waiting list. Miller is running out of ribbon, though, and more won’t arrive until the weekend.

"Everyone wants to be part of the greater good. There is more good than evil in this world and I think people are trying to prove that," Stinchcomb, 39, said as the stiff ribbon rustled off the spool and into her hands.

Growing trouble: Mom says accused attacker 'not a monster'

Authorities arrested Colt Gray, 14, in connection with the shooting. They accuse him of killing students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and math teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Eight other students and another teacher were also injured, according to investigators.

Authorities also arrested Gray's father, Colin Gray, and charged him with murder for giving his son access to the gun. Neither Colt nor Colin Gray have spoken publicly, nor have they yet entered an answer to the charges against them, which authorities say will likely be widened as a grand jury investigates.

Colt Gray remains in custody at a regional juvenile detention facility, while his father is jailed at the Barrow County Detention Center about five miles from Apalachee High School. The incident also sparked a series of copycat threats nationwide.

On Sept. 11, Gray's mother apologized to the community in an open letter, saying her son "is not a monster."

Marcee Gray wrote in a statement to CNN: "We are all in a living nightmare right now, and I will personally never forgive myself for what has happened." She didn't address Colin Gray, whom she previously called an abusive husband, according to a posting she made on Linkedin. The two divorced several years ago.

Neighbors said they didn't know Colin Gray, although several had seen him driving to work or coming home in his Nissan pickup. The tan single-story home Colt and Colin Gray lived in on a rural road about five miles from the high school is a rental property, and neighbors said Colin Gray hadn't lived there long.

After the shooting, dozens of deputies, state investigators and federal agents descended upon the house. They interviewed Colin Gray as he sat on the tailgate of his pickup, neighbors said, before taking him into custody.

The Gray family had lived locally for many years, although court records and interviews paint a picture of a family falling apart.

Marcee Gray holds a master's degree and had worked as an quality-control engineer, as well as a supervisor at a Winder steel distributor in 2015.

But she has clearly been struggling in recent years. In 2019, she was sued for bouncing a $10,000 check, court records show.

In 2023 she was charged with possession of controlled substances, including methamphetamine, fentanyl and muscle relaxers, and separately charged for "scratching" words onto Colin Gray's company truck, according to court records reviewed by USA TODAY.

Around that time she also posted on LinkedIn that she had moved more than 200 miles away from Winder due to the "constant domestic abuse" she suffered at home.

A review of child support orders filed in three Atlanta-area counties shows Colin Gray taking on the lion's share of financial support for the couple's four children until early 2022 when court filings in Jackson County show the family was nearly $4,000 behind on rent. By the time an eviction order was signed in May 2022, the family had fallen nearly $12,000 behind.

In May 2023, local authorities investigated Colt, saying threats to shoot up a school had been posted from a social media account linked to his email address. Body-camera footage of Jackson County Sheriff’s investigators interviewing him showed a mild-mannered then-13-year-old, quiet and respectful, who denied making threats.

To date, investigators have not revealed any potential motive for Colt Gray to attack his school, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has now asked witnesses to avoid talking about what they saw or know, in order to protect the prosecution's case.

The GBI declined to comment on the substantive facts of the case, as has the local district attorney, who cited Georgia regulations about what he can say outside of court. A Barrow County grand jury will consider the evidence and will likely add additional charges, said Piedmont Judicial Circuit District Attorney Brad Smith.

"Everyone in this community is a victim," Smith said after the Grays appeared in court. "Every child in that school is a victim ... I feel the weight of all of that."

'Love will prevail' but grief lingers for Apalachee victims

For now, the community is seeking the good.

People are hosting BBQ fundraisers for the victims and their families, painting murals on shop windows in the historic downtown and honoring the police and first-responders who stopped the attack within moments.

"Love will prevail" signs, their marker-drawn letters bleeding into the paper, surround an impromptu memorial site at the school's flagpole, where the American and Georgia flags still flutter at half-staff.

Barrow County residents are hoping for a return to Friday night football games and normal church services and weekend volleyball matches, but they're also keeping an anxious eye on their kids who returned to school Tuesday, and wondering aloud if this could happen again, and why here?

"It's not just the loss of the individuals," said trauma therapist Alicia Seymour, a resident of nearby McDonough, after visiting the memorial site on Wednesday. "It’s the loss of security. The loss of safety. The ongoing fear of parents everywhere. This kind of trauma has a cascading impact."

Psychiatrist Sabrina Browne, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said such community attacks are disorienting for everyone. Browne, who assisted following the Uvalde school shootings in Texas, said Barrow County residents need to understand that their grief will linger, possibly for a lifetime. She said survivors often feel guilty they weren't hurt, which can make it hard for them to grieve properly.

"There’s no right way to grieve, no one way to grieve and it will look different for everybody," she said. "Once the cameras are gone and the eyes have gone somewhere else, they will be dealing with this indefinitely."

Browne said parents of younger children should be aware that their kids might suddenly want to start sleeping in bed with them, or act particularly clingy. But older kids might lash out or misbehave, surrendering to an anger that is sometimes an easier emotion to process, she said.

Most students in the Barrow County School District returned to classes earlier this week, although Apalachee High School remains closed. Authorities have not yet said how they will handle returning those students to class.

While returning to classes will help restore a sense of normalcy, the impacts will linger, said Ronn Nozoe, the CEO of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. About 25 of the association's members have experienced school shootings, and some of those have become counselors for other affected communities.

After some school shootings, neighbors have turned against each other as they criticize or defend authorities and school officials for how they handled both the initial attack and the countless decisions following it, from when to reopen the building to how much to spend on security.

"These things can tear entire communities apart," Nozoe said. "These things don't go away. Once they happen, you can't undo them."

Nozoe said it's also important to not look away from the grief and impacts being felt in Barrow County. He said Americans have become so desensitized to mass killings and school shootings that we're losing perspective.

"If we don't keep taking about it, people will forget," he said. "We're the United States of America. No children should be shot or harmed in this country. This should not be possible, for someone to go to a school and shoot it up. We have to do better."

Sustained by faith, Barrow County residents look ahead

But while nothing can erase what's happened, many Barrow County residents are leaning on on their Christian faith to sustain them. At the historic Bethlehem First United Methodist Church, where some survivors and their families worship, church leaders have been urging the community to seek love, not hate.

"Help us to forgive, lest bitterness and anger consume us as much as it seems it did them," Associate Pastor Beth Dickinson said in a prayer, the 200-year-old wooden pews creaking beneath her congregation. "Teach us to love in the midst of hate. Teach us to be agents for peace, rejecting violence."

At the florist shop, Stinchcomb and her mother have the bow-making down pat. It takes them about two minutes to craft each one from heavy-duty ribbon designed to be displayed on rural mailboxes for months to come.

Stinchcomb said while she has questions about how the shooter came to attack the school, she's confident in how authorities are handling things, especially when it comes to sending her own kids back to class.

“I have no fear of them going to school," she said. "I think our law enforcement has exceeded all of our expectations – they’ve done such a good job."

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, whose deputies have been hailed as heroes for ending the shooting so quickly, said he can't talk about what happened, not yet. But he said he hopes residents maintain respect for his deputies.

"I want people to understand that we're doing everything we can to make sure their children are safe. I hope they have the faith in us going forward," Smith said.

And what does he hope for long-term?

"Complete healing," Smith said. "God's going to do that for us. Always does."

Contributing: Michael Loria and Melissa Cruz