By Clayton Cranford, author of Radicalized Online

Last week I was in Orlando teaching my Investigative Threat Assessment Process course at the National School Safety Conference. Thirty school officials and law enforcement officers from all over the country spent the day with me. Principals, counselors, school psychologists, SROs, district safety directors. All of them there to learn how to spot a student who is moving toward violence and step in before anyone gets hurt.

In almost every class I teach, somebody eventually asks a version of the same question. How would we have known?

I want to answer that using the case that’s been in the news all month. On July 24, Colt Gray pleaded guilty to all 55 counts against him for the September 4, 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. His father, Colin Gray, is being sentenced this week after a jury convicted him back in March of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, and 18 counts of cruelty to children. As I write this, testimony in Colt’s sentencing hearing is still going on.

I’m not going to spend much time on the shooting itself. Tragically, four people died that morning. Teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14. Nine more were wounded. Those facts are the end of the story. The part that matters for prevention is the three years leading up to it, because that’s where all the intervention points were.

And there were a lot of them.

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