The 13-year-old boy arrested for allegedly making school-shooting threats in Pierce County and whose home held nearly two dozen firearms has been released to electronic home monitoring so he can attend mental health counseling.
He was charged last month in Juvenile Court with attempted threat to bomb or injure property, three counts of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of fireworks, to which he pleaded not guilty.
The News Tribune generally does not name individuals charged with a crime as a juvenile.
The boy spent about three weeks in detention at Remann Hall before Judge Joseph Evans ordered the teenager’s release at a Sept. 29 hearing. According to court documents, he is to reside only at his home in the Clover Creek area of unincorporated Pierce County, where he was arrested last month, with exceptions to attend counseling and medical appointments. He is also expected to attend school online.
At a previous detention review hearing Sept. 22, a probation officer said the teen’s mother had been in contact with Ford Middle School about having him enrolled full time, and his defense attorney said they wouldn’t object to having his backpack checked every day.
Joel Zylstra, a spokesperson for the Franklin Pierce School District, told The News Tribune on Tuesday that the teen was not enrolled there and that he wasn’t aware of any conversations about him attending school at Ford.
“If the family were to pursue enrollment, they would apply and go through a pre-enrollment process to determine whether or not our schools have the capacity to support his learning and to ensure a safe learning environment for him and for others,” Zylstra said.
The teen hasn’t been a student in the Franklin Pierce School District since 2021, according to charging documents. Pierce County Sheriff’s Office detectives learned he had been homeschooled after he was unenrolled there, but court documents didn’t describe why he was taken out of the school district.
Social-media posts made by the teen on several platforms alerted investigators to his alleged school-shooting threats. They allegedly included selfies he took with unsecured weapons in his home while dressed similarly to past school shooters, and posts that appeared to idolize them. A June 29 post on Tumblr allegedly showed a homemade craft project depicting the 2022 Uvalde, Texas school shooter. The boy allegedly wrote: “I made him a cube. He is horribly made and I love him so much.”
Inside his home, investigators found AR-style rifles, according to charging documents, firearms mounted on walls, unsecured handguns and ammunition magazines in the boy’s bedroom. There was a heavy backpack containing ammo boxes and magazines with writing referencing mass shooters which detectives described as a “go-bag” for a shooting.
Fireworks and a smoke grenade also were found in the home, according to charging documents. The Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Facebook post that it was unknown what or who the boy intended to target but that he appeared ready to commit a mass shooting.
During his detention, probation officers reported that his behavior was appropriate overall and that he’d received only one incident report for giving food to another youth.
