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The parents of accused school shooter Colt Gray have suddenly been thrust into the spotlight, with reports of previous arrests, a rocky marriage, and now, charges against dad for allegedly providing the weapon used to fatally gun down four people and injure nine more.
As tenants, Colin and Marcee Gray were chaotic from the start, according to a former landlord, who told The Independent that when he finally evicted the troublesome couple in 2020, they later came back to retrieve their guns while abandoning their pets to fend for themselves.
The property owner, who asked not to be named for professional reasons, said he almost immediately had a “bad feeling” about the couple, beginning with Colin’s refusal to shake his hand or look him in the eye. On top of that, Marcee, 37, who has a long rap sheet for drug possession and other low-level crimes, along with a reported reputation for unseemly behavior in public, appeared “scared as hell” of her husband, according to the ex-landlord.
After the now-estranged pair fell too far behind on their rent, the landlord told them that they and their three kids — among them, 14-year-old Colt, the freshman accused of fatally shooting two classmates and two teachers earlier this week at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia — had to vacate the home. They wound up leaving a few random items behind, including the dogs they moved in with, according to the stunned landlord.
“The craziest part of all is that they left [their] two German Shepherds,” the landlord recalled on Friday, adding that Colin and Marcee Gray simply ignored his attempts to reunite them. “I imagine the next place where they were renting didn’t allow dogs, so they just left them.”
Colt Gray, who appeared in Barrow County Superior Court on Friday morning to face four counts of felony murder over Wednesday’s horrific massacre, is being held without bail. He will be tried as an adult, according to authorities, and if convicted, faces life in prison, but not the death penalty because he is under 18.
His 54-year-old dad, Colin Gray, also appeared in court on Friday, on four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children in connection with the bloodshed. He is accused of giving his son the AR-15-style firearm used in the shooting as a Christmas present last year, several months after the FBI showed up to question the boy about online threats he had allegedly made about carrying out a school shooting.
Marcee Gray, who is reportedly cooperating with investigators, is not charged with a crime. She was unable to be reached on Friday for comment, along with Colin and Colt Gray, who remain detained. A smattering of relatives, reached by phone and text, declined to be interviewed.
When the Grays were told a few years back to leave their rental home, they also ditched a handful of other items, some of which the landlord told The Independent he has since put to good use: a golf bag, an archery set, and assorted tools. And, in what might retrospectively seem to be another foreboding sign, the two weren’t particularly interested in preserving important memories of their own.
“They left their wedding photos,” the landlord said. “My wife tried to contact her to say, ‘Hey, do you want these? Like, you can have them.’ And she never responded. So we ended up having to throw away their wedding pictures.”
On the other hand, when the Grays were slow to leave and the landlord finally changed the locks, he said Colin Gray returned and “kicked in the door to get his guns out.” He and his wife reported the intrusion to police, who the landlord said recommended they not pursue criminal charges since the damage to the entrance was minimal and Colin had actually only “stolen” back his own belongings.
The landlord said he was never able to collect several thousand dollars in back rent the family owed, a detail confirmed by court records.
Until Thursday morning, when Colin and Marcee Gray’s names were revealed, their old landlord said he and his wife had “kind of forgotten about them.”
“And then it all comes back,” he said, describing the moment he made the connection between the shooting at Apalachee HS and his former tenants as “so shocking.”
“But in the same way, you’re kind of like, ‘Well, shoot, I mean, it was a weird, weird situation, so maybe it wasn’t as shocking as it seemed,” the landlord went on. “... We thought it was a bad situation, but shit, we’re like, ‘Oh man, we got lucky that [that] was all we dealt with.”
Having consumed a barrage of media coverage in the aftermath of this week’s unthinkable bloodshed, the landlord said he has run through the spectrum of emotions, feeling, of course, revulsion at Colt’s alleged actions, but a degree of empathy, as well, for him and his two siblings.
“It’s just so sad,” he said. “The more I’m reading these articles that are coming out, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, these kids didn’t have a freaking chance, man.’ Like, these parents just totally f***** them, you know?”
