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.
