A Maryland teenager has been charged with planning to carry out a school shooting after authorities discovered a 129-page document in which he allegedly outlined his intentions in detail and said he wanted to be famous.
Alex Ye, 18, of Rockville, was arrested Wednesday on a charge of threats of mass violence, the Montgomery County Police Department said in a statement Thursday.
Central to the case is the document, which was seized under a search warrant following an investigation by the FBI and police, according to the statement.
“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.
Investigators also found internet searches, drawings and documents “related to mass threats of violence,” according to the statement.
Police plan to provide more information about the case during a news conference Friday morning.
Police added that security had been increased at schools as a result of the investigation, particularly Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, where Ye had attended in person before being sent to a string of psychiatric hospitals.
Authorities first learned of the document — which Ye called a “memoir” — after being contacted by an informant named in court records only as “Witness-One.” The person spent time in a psychiatric facility with Ye, who said the memoir was a fictional account of a high school shooting.
According to court records, the memoir opens with a disclaimer that says: “This is not threat of violence, nor does it represent the author’s beliefs.”
But its content was enough to alarm authorities and court records allege Ye put at least five people at Wootton High School “at a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury if the threat were carried out.”
“It appears that the ‘manifesto’ has portions of fictional and non-fictional qualities and is based on reality with a plan of Threats of Mass Violence,” officials said in court documents.
Ye allegedly wrote of wanting to shoot up his school with an AR-15, targeting the elementary school because little kids make easier targets, wanting to be famous and wanting to set the record for the most kills.
His internet searches included gun ranges “near me” and searches about school shootings including Sandy Hook and Parkland, prosecutors said. He was also in a Discord chat group with others focused on glorifying school shootings, the charging document said.
Ye was hospitalized from December 2022 for threatening to “shoot up school,” and for having homicidal and suicidal ideations, according to court records. It was not immediately clear why Ye was released the next month as court records say it was determined he was still preoccupied with schools shootings, self-harm and explosives.
