His Daughter Called From Lockdown. He Couldn't Go To Her.

I've watched a lot of testimony in a lot of courtrooms. Law enforcement takes the stand all the time. Usually it's clinical. Dates, times, procedures, chain of custody. You hear the training come through in every answer. Controlled. Professional.

That's not what happened today in Barrow County.

Sheriff Jud Smith took the stand on the first day of testimony in the Colin Gray trial, and what the jury got was something you don't see very often. They got a man reliving the worst day of his career and his life at the same time.

The Morning Started Normal

Smith was at his office at 233 East Broad Street that morning. Checking emails. Shooting the breeze with a GBI agent who was there reviewing files on a former employee. He joked that he'd clone the former employee if he could get her to come back. Normal morning stuff.

Then his phone started going off.

The Centegix alert system had been tested at Bethlehem Elementary at 7:30 that same morning. So when the first alert hit from Apalachee High School, Smith's first thought was that the system was malfunctioning. Then a second alert. A third. A fourth. Multiple teachers were pressing their panic buttons simultaneously, and Smith still wasn't sure what was happening.

Then Major Todd Drews ran into his office. Active shooter at Apalachee.

Smith told the jury he doesn't remember driving to the school. Four miles. He remembers turning onto Haymon Morris Road and seeing blue lights and red lights as far as he could see. That's it.

What He Found Inside

Smith entered the building and immediately found Colt Gray handcuffed on the floor with a rifle and several magazines beside him. Just beyond, a person lay face down on the ground. Not moving. That was Mason Skirmhorn. He was 14 years old.

They cleared the area, not knowing if there was a second shooter. Bathroom by bathroom, hallway by hallway, using what they call the bubble technique, expanding outward from the point of entry. Every classroom door was locked because teachers did exactly what they'd been trained to do. Which meant law enforcement had to clear each room one at a time with keys.

Think about that for a second. The same training that keeps kids safe also slows down the people trying to reach them. That's the reality of active shooter response that nobody talks about.

Natalie

Smith found a girl in the hallway. Devastating injuries to her arm and wrist. Bleeding from multiple locations. He and a Winder Police Department captain got her onto a drag bag and started pulling her out of the building.

She looked up at him and begged him not to cover her face. Not to let her die.

He told her she was going to be okay.

When they got outside, Smith yelled for a tourniquet. He didn't have one on him. A colonel grabbed one from an ambulance. It was pink. Smith told the jury he'll never forget that it was pink. He told Natalie it wasn't going to feel good. He cranked it down on her shoulder. She screamed.

Then they loaded her in the ambulance, and he ran back inside.

There's a detail in this testimony that tells you everything about the chaos of that morning. As they were carrying Natalie out, Colt Gray was still lying handcuffed in the hallway. She saw him. She cursed at him. The girl bleeding from shrapnel wounds, tourniquet on her shoulder, being dragged past the kid who shot her.

"Daddy, Are We Okay?"

While all of this was happening, false threats were flooding into every school in Barrow County. Other schools went into lockdown. Law enforcement had to be diverted to clear them.

Smith's phone rang. It was his daughter. She was at Winder Barrow High School. They were locked down. She was scared.

"Daddy, are we okay?"

He told her the deputies were there. She would be safe. That's all he could do. He was standing in a school hallway with blood on his uniform and ceiling dust still settling, and his own child was calling him from another lockdown at another school, and he couldn't go to her.

He paused on the stand. He composed himself. And then he kept testifying because that's what the job requires.

The Evacuation He Regrets

Smith made a decision that day that he told the jury still bothers him. He evacuated the surviving students through the hallways where the shooting happened. Through the crime scene. Past things that children and teachers should never have to see.

He said there was no other way to get them out quickly, and he wanted them out of the building as fast as possible. But the cost of that decision was real. Kids saw things that day that will stay with them forever.

I want to sit with that for a second, because it matters. This is what happens in these situations. There are no clean choices. You get kids out fast through a crime scene, or you keep them locked in classrooms while you figure out if there's a second shooter. Both options are terrible. Both cause harm. The person making the call in real time doesn't get the luxury of hindsight.

Three Families. One Afternoon.

After the building was cleared and parents were flooding in by the thousands, Smith had one more task. The hardest one.

He sat down with Christian Angulo's family first. There was a language barrier. He recruited school personnel to help translate. Then he told them their son had been killed.

Then Mason Skirmhorn's family. Same message.

Then Cristina Irimie's husband. Same message.

Coach Aspinwall's wife wasn't on site. That notification happened elsewhere.

Smith told the jury that in 25 years of law enforcement, notifying those families was the most difficult thing he's ever done. I believe him. I watched him say it.

The Defense Said Nothing

When the prosecution finished, the defense attorney stood up and said two words: "No questions."

That's significant. When a witness takes the stand and tells the jury about carrying wounded children out of a school, about applying tourniquets, about taking his daughter's call from lockdown, about sitting with families and delivering the worst news of their lives, and the defense has absolutely nothing to challenge, it tells you something about the weight of what the jury just heard.

Now, to be fair to the defense, their case isn't about whether the shooting was horrific. Everyone agrees it was. Their case is about whether Colin Gray knew what his son was planning. Sheriff Smith's testimony doesn't directly answer that question. What it does is show the jury, in devastating detail, exactly what those 29 charges are built on. The human cost.

And when the human cost is this heavy, "no questions" might be the smartest thing a defense attorney can say.

▶ WATCH THE FULL TESTIMONY "Daddy, Are We Okay?": Sheriff Breaks Down Recounting School Shooting Response

This trial is just getting started. Day 1 has already established the stakes in a way that no opening statement could. The prosecution is building their foundation, and they're building it with the people who were there. The teachers who saw him at the door. The officers who ran toward the gunfire. The sheriff who carried the wounded out and then sat with the families of the dead.

Colin Gray is presumed innocent. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that the jury now understands, on a visceral level, what happened at Apalachee High School on September 4th, 2024. The prosecution's next job is connecting it to the man sitting at the defense table.

We'll be watching every step of the way.