A transgender-identifying teenager who was taken into custody and charged for alleged plans to commit a mass shooting at a Maryland high school kept a “manifesto” in which she praised the Nashville mass shooter, fantasized about pedophilia, and voiced concerns about being misgendered after her crime, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Wire.
The thwarted shooter, an 18-year-old woman from Rockville who identifies as a man, was arrested on Wednesday by the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD), the county said in a news release, adding that the FBI notified the MCPD about a 129-page “manifesto” in which the teenager wrote about committing a school shooting, contemplated targeting an elementary school, and more.
The court documents obtained by The Daily Wire show disturbing examples from the “manifesto,” which the teenager claimed was fictional, but an MCPD officer said had mirrored actual events and was “based on reality with a plan of threats of mass violence.”
“I really want to be famous. Even infamous,” she wrote on one page. A second entry confesses to pedophilic thoughts, but says she chose not to act on them — “I sometimes think I’m a pedophile. I get turned on by little kids,” she wrote. In a third, the teenager mused about potential news stories about a shooting at a Rockville school.
The court documents show that the teenager did web search on various mass shootings, including on the transgender-identifying shooter who murdered six people at the Covenant School in Nashville in March of 2023.
The suspect appears to have been inspired by the Covenant School mass shooting. Media calling the now-dead Nashville shooter by birth name rather than preferred name made the arrested teenager want to change her name, the Maryland teenager wrote in the manifesto.
“Makes me want to change my name legally before I commit a shooting to make sure the news doesn’t misgender me,” she wrote. “He was suicidal before the shooting. Just like me. He, too, wanted to kill little kids. A rush of adrenaline fills my body. He’s so relatable.”
As a result of the investigation, the MCPD’s Community Engagement Division coordinated with Montgomery County Public Schools to increase security at schools, particularly Wootton High School, police said.
The Maryland suspect was hospitalized in December 2022 after threatening to “shoot up a school,” and has not attended school in-person since then, the charging documents say. She spent time hospitalized for homicidal and suicidal ideations, but later returned home and attended school online, the documents show.
She was hospitalized again last month after she shared her manifesto with a fellow patient at a prior hospitalization, and that friend reported it to police. Hospital staff “felt they were required by law to break confidentiality to notify law enforcement and Wootton High School. The FBI was also notified,” the documents say, adding that she “has previously disclosed to psychiatric staff during his in-patient treatment that he had thoughts of a mass attack at his elementary school and high school.”
The police affidavit refers to the suspect with male pronouns.
A Wootton High School counselor told the FBI that she worked with the suspect from October 2022 through February 2023 and that the suspect “would express violent thoughts such as shooting up the school.” The suspect suggested it could occur at graduation.
Chat logs on Instagram, which police received as a result of a search warrant, showed messages that indicated a desire by the suspect to commit a shooting or bomb a school, the affidavit also shows.
The teenager is currently being held at the Montgomery County Central Processing Unit where she awaits a bond hearing, the release from police noted, adding that a news conference is being planned for Friday. The Daily Wire is not naming the suspect due to our policy against printing the names or photographs of mass shooters in our reports.
Police made clear that the suspected teen is a biological female who was going by male pronouns. The legal system is treating her as an Asian female, authorities said.
Online court records showed the suspect has an attorney. The Daily Wire reached out seeking comment. A bail/bond review is scheduled for Friday and a trial is slated for June 3.