Maryland Teen To Serve 1 Year In Prison After Detailing School Shooting Plans

A 19-year-old high school student who prosecutors said obsessively wrote about carrying out mass shootings at two Maryland schools will serve one year of a 10-year prison sentence after being found guilty of threatening to commit mass violence.

Andrea “Alex” Ye, 19, of Rockville was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison, with all but 12 months suspended, after his detailed writings about carrying out an attack were flagged to law enforcement while in an inpatient psychiatric facility early last year.

Ye, who had previously been hospitalized for threatening to “shoot up a school” and homicidal and suicidal ideation, had a “consistent obsession with school shootings and school shooters” that he documented in a 129-page “manifesto” and shared with a fellow patient, leading to his arrest, said Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy at a press conference Wednesday.

“Some of the things that were in the manifesto included things like, ‘I want to shoot up my school. I’ve been preparing for it the last few months,’” said McCarthy.

Ye fantasized in his writings about gaining access to his father’s gun case, making bombs, and becoming a “romanticized” serial killer who receives “tons of love letters” and a Netflix documentary, according to the criminal charges.

“Maybe the most chilling thing of all, the only reason why he didn’t do this is because he didn’t have access to a gun,” McCarthy said back in January after Ye’s conviction by a Montgomery County judge. “He said, ‘If I had access to a gun, this would have happened.’”

As part of his sentence, Ye will serve five years of supervised probation after his release from prison. He will also have to undergo mental health treatment, perform community service, stay away from the two schools he threatened, and stay off the app Discord, which prosecutors said he routinely used to search for “mass shootings” and “school shootings.” Ye has already been behind bars for 14 months since his arrest last year but he waived his right to credit for that time already served.

McCarthy expressed regret and frustration about Ye’s prison sentence, arguing that rather than spending another year in a detention facility, he should receive long-term psychological treatment. He said a court hearing has been scheduled for September so that his defense can propose a supervision program for him upon his release.

Attempts to reach Ye’s defense attorney for comment Thursday were not immediately successful.

“These issues don’t go away quickly and therefore I think longer-term treatment for a lot of our young people, Mr. Ye among them, is what we need to offer them, and that’s what we were trying to offer them today,” McCarthy said of his office’s recommendation for Ye to attend a local youthful offender program.

McCarthy did credit the judge for offering to meet with Ye every two weeks during his probationary period to ensure that he gets the attention that he needs. He called that “unusual step” a possible “reflection of the judge’s concern that she recognizes that there’s a real danger if there’s not proper supervision here when he goes back into the community.”

“Being on probation does not necessarily mean what I think some people naively think,” he said, while emphasizing the workload those tasked with supervising offenders face. “They are tremendously overworked and overburdened in terms of people they supervise in the community.”