A teenager was arrested Thursday after allegedly planning a mass shooting on Valentine’s Day at her high school.
Trinity Shockley (18) was arrested on charges of conspiracy to murder, intimidation, and conspiracy to intimidate. She is currently being held in the Morgan County Jail, Martinsville, Indiana without bond.
According to a probable-cause filing filed with the court, FBI’s Sandy Hook Promise Say Anything Anonymous Reporting System called the local sheriff when a tipster reported that their friend had planned an attack, had an AR-15 rifle, and had ordered a bulletproof vest.
The tip said that the person was obsessed with Nikolas, the mass killer who opened fire on Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland (Florida) High School, on February 14, 2018. He killed 14 students as well as three members of staff.
The tipster described their friend as “Jamie,” a 12th grader who identified as transgender, according to court documents. Snapchat messages sent to the tip line included one where “Jamie” characterized her plans as “Parkland part two,” records showed.
In one of the messages cited, she stated: “I have been planning this for a year.”
According to documents, she admitted to being sexually attracted to Cruz and stated that “she had already named the children” she intended to have with him. The documents also claim that she gave the counselor a locket with Cruz’s picture inside, and claimed to have written him numerous times.
According to official documents, the police executed a search of the apartment Shockley and her father shared on Wednesday. They discovered photos of Cruz, Dylan Roof, a man who murdered nine people in a South Carolina Church in 2015, and Andrew Blaze who murdered three people in a Pennsylvania supermarket in 2017.
The teen’s backpack was decorated with buttons of the killers’ faces — which also graced the wallpaper of her laptop, officials said. On display in her room was a poster for “Zero Day,” a 2003 film depicting a school shooting, court documents showed, and inside her notebooks were illustrations of swastikas and the words “kill,” “bang” and “I hate you all DIE DIE DIE.”
According to official records, her diary entries revealed that she had been bullied at school and confessed to self-loathing. The documents revealed that she wrote this last month, “These thoughts will not stop. I want to hurt other people. All the time!”
Police said that Shockley had AR-15 magazines and ammunition in his home, as suggested by the anonymous tip. He also owned a soft armor vest.
Shockley told investigators later that she “joked” about her plans, and that she didn’t have access to a firearm, according to court documents. However, Shockley cited social media postings containing photos of magazines, messages flattering Cruz and Roof, as well as threats to commit a school massacre.
Mooresville Schools released a press release stating that they were aware of Shockley’s arrest and that he “will not be returning to the school.”
Mooresville Police Detective Matthew McDaniel stated in court documents that Shockley received mental health counseling from freshman year onwards and expressed suicidal thoughts in the past, but the school claimed that “nothing significant was enough to warrant intervention.”
According to information McDaniel received from the school, her father “would deny access to resources” every time Trinity “tried to receive mental healthcare assistance.”
McDaniel stated in the probable cause that Mr. Shockley didn’t believe in mental healthcare treatment and didn’t take his daughter’s condition seriously. He explained that, when Trinity turned 18, last November, she enrolled in treatment on her own.
Shockley told investigators she was bullied after a drunk driver struck her in 2022 while she was waiting for the school bus, the documents said.
The incident, according to local media reports, left her with a fractured femur, fractured arm, sprained ACL, two brain contusions, and a web compression fracture.
The school raised over $12,000 to help her recover. Angela Altmeyer, her aunt at the time, told a local reporter that they had been “really responsive”. “They wanted to send cards or whatever they could do.”
We asked Trinity Shockley’s father Tim Shockley and other members of her family for their comments, but they haven’t responded to our request yet. No court date has been set at this time.
