Maryland high school student arrested after authorities discovered a 129-page document detailing school shooting plan, police say

A Maryland high school student was arrested and charged with threat of mass violence after police say they discovered evidence revealing the teen had plans to commit a school shooting, authorities said Thursday.

The arrest on Wednesday came after authorities discovered a 129-page document they say was written by 18-year-old Alex Ye, the Montgomery County Department of Police said in a news release Thursday.

Authorities learned of the writings following an exchange Ye had via Instagram messaging with an unidentified person who felt a school shooting was “imminent,” according to the teenager’s arrest warrant. The unidentified person knew Ye from an inpatient treatment at a local psychiatric facility, the warrant says.

Ye referred to the writings as “his memoir,” which begins with a disclaimer that it is a work of fiction, the arrest warrant says.

FfaerieOxide,
FfaerieOxide avatar

There's alot of passive language here, but I'm not seeing what he actually did.
"...that was made"
"...significant statements"
"...statements about"
"...conversations involving"

I'm not seeing, "He made threats" or "He handed out the book". Pigs had to kick his door in and steal it off his computer.

Also notice how they start the March 5th paragraph admitting they are describing a book before switching over to "...the document" when describing the contents.

Just going off what the news has reported what did this kid do Chuck Palahniuk didn't win an Oregon Book Award for?

  • March 3: MCPD contacted the Rockville City Police Department to check the welfare of Ye. The police department received information about a threat that was made. Officers went to Ye's residence and Ye's father answered the door. The officers were denied entry into the home and were not allowed to search the residence or to interview Ye.
  • March 4: The Rockville City Police Department notified the MCPD Community Engagement Division for an intervention. It was noted that Ye had made significant statements regarding shooting up a former elementary school Ye attended and high school. Police then issued a search warrant in order to gain access to the 129-page document.
  • March 5: A friend of Ye reported the student to police for a book he was writing. In the book, Ye detailed acts of a school shooting and stated that he wanted to be killed execution style. In the document Ye wrote that he would kill school children because, "little kids make easier targets." He also wrote that he wanted to become a serial killer instead of a mass murderer because serial killers are romanticized.
  • March 6: Intervention officers evaluated Ye at his home and he was taken to a hospital for an emergency evaluation petition.
  • March 13: FBI agents interviewed the Wootton High School staff.
  • March 15: After speaking to a school psychologist, they stated that Ye would be fixated on statements about school shootings.
  • March 19: MCPD searched Ye's Discord app which revealed conversations involving:
    The Columbine Shooting
    Drawings of shootings on Ye's iPhone
    2023 shooting shooting game
    The Parkland Shooting
    Shooter
    Terrorist Threat
WamGams,

What really gets me is the waste of labor here.

This kid was halfway to a first novel. Almost zero writers can say they completed their first legitimate work before 18.

Like… What a fucking shame.

Landslide7648,

Glad to see procrastination got the better of him

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

Whooo boy, this one is probably going to turn into a media circus. The accused is F2M trans.

RememberTheApollo_,

Whooo boy, this one is probably going to turn into a media Faux News circus. The accused is F2M trans.

The conservatives are going churn that for all it’s worth.

RIPandTERROR,
@RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works avatar

Dammit

FfaerieOxide,
FfaerieOxide avatar

A search warrant obtained by MCPD led to internet searches, drawings and documents related to threats of mass violence.

You got to think if they found bombs and whatnot, they would tell us. They didn't, so they repeat a bunch of different words for "speech".

tiefling,

How the fuck do you write 129 pages’ worth of this?!

Socsa,

Adderall

xePBMg9, (edited )

It’s probably 129 pages of printout ChatGPT dialog.

Guy: Hey ChatGPT! We are gonna role play a school shooting scenario. Totally fictional stuff.

ChatGPT: Ok, bla-bla-bla.

Guy: Change x.

ChatGPT: Ok, bla-bla-bla.

Guy: Change y.

ChatGPT: Ok, bla-bla-bla.

Guy: Change z.

And on it goes.

werefreeatlast,

These days some people’s names are really long. That’s my guess, I don’t know.

ryan213,
@ryan213@lemmy.ca avatar

Very large print. Maybe 80pt size.

Brkdncr,

Large margins. Double spaced.

PoliticalAgitator,

Probably by descending into psychotic, self-aggrandising gibberish.

stoly,

Yes, this person has lost touch with reality. They need serious help, not incarceration. This will potentially end up with them being held incompetent to stand trial.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

How the fuck do you write 129 pages’ worth of this?!

Simple, he enjoys the idea of it.

" Ye was hospitalized in December 2022 for “threatening to ‘shoot up a school,’ homicidal, and suicidal ideations,” according to the arrest warrant. The student was then hospitalized for five months in 2023 at Johns Hopkins Pediatric Unit for “homicidal ideations.”

More recently, on March 15, FBI agents interviewed a school counselor who worked with the student from late 2022 to early 2023 and said Ye would “express violent thoughts such as shooting up the school, wanting to hurt other people, and would smile while saying it,” according to the arrest warrant. "

Fredselfish,
@Fredselfish@lemmy.world avatar

Wait just had this argument with my boss. He said that conference were in Vegas those assclowns got together to plan on how to seize voting machines etc wasn’t illegal. He says you can’t be charged for planning an attack. I gave a scenario of me planning a bank robbery. He said not a crime to plan it.

Yet here we are they arrested this kid. If says a work of fiction can he really be charged? Not saying he wasn’t nuts what not just what to know how you charge them?

Because lots of people write fiction scenario I am sure of shit wish they could do but would never do so.

brygphilomena,

So much comes with the intentions.

It’s not illegal to create a plan to rob a bank on its own. It becomes a crime when it gets specific, like dates and locations. If they can show intention to commit the act, it becomes a crime.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t necessarily arrest you anyway. Going through an arrest, jail, and court proceedings just to be acquitted still sucks.

SkybreakerEngineer,

Technically a conspiracy requires an overt act, after which all the planning then becomes evidence of said conspiracy.

NeptuneOrbit,

Your boss is a moron. Conspiracy is a crime. If you and I plan to rob a bank, and you ask me to go get masks to further the crime, and I do, we have all committed conspiracy to rob a bank.

In this case, the kid’s lawyer may be able to make a persuasive case it was just a dark fiction, but if there is evidence he was doing more than just writing? Idk. I’m not a lawyer.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

He says you can’t be charged for planning an attack.

Your boss is a fucking moron.

stoly,

And possibly OP for working with them.

echodot, (edited )

People are often blown up by the US government for planning an attack. So that’s an, em… interesting philosophy your boss has.

DigitalTraveler42,

129 pages!?! Wtf…

I just wrote training documentation on an IT technology and it wasn’t even that long.

Stern,
@Stern@lemmy.world avatar

Welp, guess the “in Minecraft” defense doesn’t work.

Death_Equity,

He hasn’t been convicted yet.

Slam dunk case for his defense, it is clearly a work of fiction, as indicated, and merely an intellectual exercise and a valuable study of the vulnerabilities of the hypothetical target that law enforcement should learn from and compensate the young man for.

Glad that little shit was stopped. He should have planned to film himself playing with sparklers after a petrol bath if he wanted to get famous.

Car,

Being labeled a work of fiction probably carries less weight when this person has been treated for homicidal ideations at an inpatient facility twice. Unless there’s a link where this document is really a physician-ordered tool to address inner demons or something, it’s probably not going to aid in defense.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

The article put these two lines out of order. Let me fix that for them:

“In the document, Ye writes about committing a school shooting, and strategizes how to carry out the act. Ye also contemplates targeting an elementary school and says that he wants to be famous,” police said in the news release. A search warrant obtained by investigators “led to internet searches, drawings and documents related to threats of mass violence.”

Ye referred to the writings as “his memoir,” which begins with a disclaimer that it is a work of fiction, the arrest warrant says.

That’s a ‘work of fiction’ along with OJ’s book about how he would have killed his ex-wife and her boyfriend.

Rooskie91,

Wow. Just imagine believing that the tenuous negative press coverage is worth the lives of dozens of children and your own life / incarceration.

Dkarma,

I love how they never say why the kid says he was going to shoot up the school. Couldn’t be because of being horribly bullied… Naw.

zaph,

High school student writes 129 pages about how he wants to shoot up an elementary school and you think bullying is the cause?

GBU_28,

That implies the are justifications for shooting up a school that are valid.

There are no such justifications, so the reason doesn’t matter

echodot,

The reason matters for the purposes of prevention in future cases. Yeah in the case in question the reason is irrelevant although it probably should be known.

GBU_28, (edited )

I guess I prefer that manifestos are not released immediately or to the general public due to copycats. Only investigators or school administrators need that information quickly.

Parents should be educated on proper parenting wrt disturbed kids

aStonedSanta,

I find all forms of censorship bad tbh. So I’d prefer they are released so we can learn from and help people like this better in the future to prevent more attacks. But it’s a double sided issue. Similar to documents on how to make explosives.

GBU_28,

But copycat phenomena is a real thing.

It shouldn’t be illegal to access the information, it just doesn’t need to be shouted out by the talking heads the day it is found

aStonedSanta,

Agreed. 👍

Stern,
@Stern@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think bullying alone would make one write a 129 page manifesto about shooting up an elementary school, unless of course the 18 year old was being bullied by 4th graders.

Fisk400,

Literally doesn’t matter. There is no amount of bullying that justifies you murdering another person and especially if that also involves killing or scaring innocent bystanders. If you think a school shooting is a valid response to being bullied, you are a piece a shit that deserves to he bullied.

stoly,

Nobody has ever suggested that something like this is justified. You’re reacting viscerally to someone suggesting that we try to understand the context in which this person developed, what motivates them, etc. That sort of information can be helpful to understand what drives people to these sorts of behaviors and how they can be helped.

Fisk400,

If this kid turns out to be bullied, it has the same relevance as him playing call of duty. There are literally millions of bullied kids in the world and only some of them shoot up a school.

When columbine happened the media had this narrative about the kids being bullied and it being some kind of revenge on the school. They weren’t bullied, they were just anti-social sadsacks and psychopaths. But the narrative probably inspired a couple of the following thousands of shootings.

stoly,

You seem to have this strange view on bullying as if it can’t destroy a person. In fact people never recover from it. Some empathy is deserved here.

Fisk400,

I have gallons of empathy for people that are bullied. That all goes away when they murder people. Lots of kids get brutally bullied and they don’t murder anyone. Murder is not a natural reaction to being bullied.

Empathy is Especially not deserved here where the “kid” is fucking 18 and wrote about attacking a middle school.

stoly,

I should think that it’s possible to show empathy towards a person while simultaneously condemning their actions. They are not exclusive from one another. You’re still deciding who deserves or does not deserve empathy, but everyone who has ever lived deserves empathy.

Fisk400,

Yes, I am deciding who deserves sympathy. School shooters is not in that group.

The “oh he was a tortured soul, if only someone had seen him” schtick makes the narcissistic little fuckers rock hard.

You dont give serial killers cool names and you dont give school shooters any attention outside of being sad losers. That is the responsible thing to do.

catloaf,

It’s not about justifying it, it’s about understanding the conditions that cause people to want to shoot up a school in the first place.

aStonedSanta,

Yup. And I think we need to make more honest attempts to ignore opinions like two posts above just rage reacting. It doesn’t help anything and just further alienates us from finding the truth cause it’s shrugged off as insane.

Scubus,

Fucking lmao

“You believe violence is a justified response to being bullied? You deserve to be bullied.”

Dumbass

Fisk400,

Did I say violence or did I perhaps say murder? Sorry but I don’t think the correct reaction to being bullied is to murder a bunch of 10 year olds, not even if they are shitty 10 year olds.

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

For Columbine specifically, while the killers claimed they were doing it because of bullying, it turns out that was nearly entirely a bullshit justification. Even if it was, two wrongs don’t make a right.

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