Washington County Sheriff's Office tip helps thwart Indiana school shooting plot

 

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Wis. (CBS 58) --Wisconsin investigators helped foil a plot to shoot up an Indiana high school. Now, a teenager is facing terrorism charges.

The 18-year-old was arrested on Wednesday in Mooresville, Indiana. That's about 20 miles outside of Indianapolis.

Police are now painting a disturbing picture of the teen's motive. That includes an apparent obsession with previous mass shooters.

"The pictures in her room, they looked like family photographs like you would of your kids, but they were all of people that had committed mass shootings," said Chief Kerry Buckner, Mooresville Police.

That plot targeted a school about 300 miles away, but disturbingly, we're learning this case is being linked to a Washington County teenager.
What we know about the Washington County connection to the story is that she's 19, from the Town of Addison, and she was on a messaging app called Discord where some users were engaging in disturbing conversation about school shootings.

The alleged Indianapolis-area Valentine's Day plot by 18-year-old Trinity Schockley, who goes by Jamie, began to unravel, thanks to some fast-acting work by detectives 300 miles away.

"I'm very proud of my staff. You know we took the threats very seriously," said Sheriff Martin Schulteis, Washington County.

A tipster using a hotline established by families of the Sandy Hook School shooting anonymously reported knowledge of a school threat planned for this Valentine's Day. That tip made its way to the FBI.

"The FBI was able to link one of the social media accounts to a 19-year-old female that resides in Washington County," said Sheriff Schulteis.

As Washington County worked the case, the tipster provided screen shots of messages on the Discord app, photos of an AR-15 the suspect had access to, ammunition and a bullet proof vest, and it seemed the trail would lead to the Town of Addison, Wisconsin.

"Time is of the essence with these types of things. We had our operations division set up on the house," said Sheriff Schulteis.

With probable cause, the Town of Addison teen was involved, a search warrant was executed but came up empty.

"That individual was part of the conversations about school shootings, but was not a direct threat," said Sheriff Schulteis.

With the suspect still at large, Washington County did a little more digging and came up with an IP address and a phone number and connected them to Mooresville, about 20 miles outside of Indianapolis and Schockley, whose mother recently died, and who investigators say has an obsession with the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting.

A search through Schockley's possessions reportedly turned up some notebooks with these words inside, "I want to hurt others."

"It's the perfect model of where somebody was concerned, got involved, reported it and that got the ball rolling like I said without the courage of that person intervening, we could have a much different conversation," said Sheriff Schulteis.

Schockley is in the Morgan County jail now, on no bond.