The Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) arrested an 18-year-old transgender high-school student on Wednesday in connection with a plan to commit a school shooting.
Andrea Ye of Rockville, Maryland — who goes by the name “Alex” — authored a 129-page manifesto detailing her desire to attack an elementary school, writing that she wants to be famous and describing her strategy for carrying out the shooting, Montgomery County police announced in a Thursday press release. The statement of charges against Ye, which National Review obtained from the office of the Montgomery County state’s attorney, includes excerpts from her manifesto and glimpses into her internet history.
Several of Ye’s Google searches, in addition to instructions for making bombs and details about other school shootings, had to do with the March 2023 attack on the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, in which Audrey Hale — a biological woman identifying as a transgender man named “Aiden” — killed three nine-year-old children and three adults before being shot and killed by police. Ye viewed a behavioral threat assessment conducted of Hale and Googled the Nashville shooting, as well as other information about Hale.
The excerpts from Ye’s manifesto include fantasies of violence.
“I have also considered shooting up my former elementary school because little kids make easier targets,” Ye wrote. “And, I run the risk of getting attacked or tackled midway through with high schoolers. I also hated elementary school. The teachers were evil and the other students were little assholes. I always got in trouble and had to sit out during recess. The other kids would pretend to be my friends but make fun of me to my face. It would be the perfect revenge.”
Ye said her “ultimate goal would be to set the world record for the most amount of kills in a shooting” and wrote that she would “try to decapitate [her] victims with a knife to turn the injuries into deaths.”
The statement of charges also includes a series of Instagram messages Ye sent in which she said she had “told way too many people that [she] want[s] to shoot up [her] school” and wrote that “shooting people would be fun and causing fear and seeing them dead.”
Ye said she wanted “people to make fan art of [her],” “talk about [her],” and to “be on the news” as a famous murderer.
Currently in custody at the Montgomery County Central Processing Unit awaiting a bond hearing, Ye was charged with threats of mass violence.