A judge decided Friday afternoon that Alex Ye, an 18-year-old from Rockville who was arrested and charged with making threats of mass violence, will remain held without bond at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Boyds.
The decision came one day before the 25th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. Local elected officials and county police gathered Friday morning for a news conference to share more details about the case and applaud those involved in preventing a potentially similar mass shooting.
“This situation highlights the critical importance of vigilance and community involvement in preventing potential tragedies,” Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones said at a press conference Friday morning.
“Thanks to [law enforcement’s] swift action and cooperation a potentially catastrophic event was prevented. I want to take a moment to stress that there was considerable patience conducted by all involved, including our investigators, before making any rash decision in this particular manner,” Jones said.
Jones said that the police department’s goal is to not arrest in every case of a threat and shared that the department has received 140 threats to schools in the county this school year. Those threats are typically shooting or bomb threats, he said.
“In those particular instances … when we have identified said students, our officers will make a visit to the family residence, speak with the parents as well as the student to make sure that the student is not capable of carrying out said threat,” Jones said. “In those cases, no arrests are made … then referred back to the school system for any further discipline which they may incur.”
Ye’s attorney, Paulette Pagán, did not immediately respond to requests for comment made via phone on Friday afternoon. According to charging documents, in early March Ye allegedly sent a 129-page “fictional story/manifesto about a high school shooting” to an individual he met while they were undergoing inpatient treatment at a psychiatric facility.
After receiving the book, the individual contacted Baltimore County Police, who then reached out to Rockville City Police, charging documents said. The witness said that the book indicated that Ye was planning the shooting for “the next day” and told police that Ye “was in treatment for suicidal and homicidal thoughts,” according to charging documents.
On March 6, Ye was taken to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda after he was served an Emergency Evaluation Petition and involuntarily committed to the facility, according to the charging documents. An Emergency Evaluation Petition is “a way to get a person who presents a danger to the life or safety of themselves or others to an emergency room to be examined,” according to the Maryland Courts website.
On March 13, staff at Suburban Hospital alerted county police Sgt. Justin Saffar that they “were concerned enough with the threat posed by Ye that they felt they were required by law to break [confidentiality] to notify law enforcement and Wootton High School. The FBI was also notified,” according to the charging documents.
Following the notification, FBI agents interviewed a Wootton High School counselor who worked with Ye from October 2022 to February 2023 and learned that during that time Ye “would express violent thoughts such as shooting up the school, wanting to hurt other people,” according to charging documents.
In addition, Ye told the counselor that he was “looking up on the internet how to get a gun and how to get into the school, laws and certain loopholes” and that he wanted to shoot up Wootton and his elementary school, Lakewood Elementary School in Rockville, according to charging documents. At the press conference on Friday, Chief Jones also clarified the timeline of events that led to Ye’s arrest. On or about March 19, Ye was released from the care of Suburban Hospital and county police continued to monitor the teen as their investigation was ongoing, Jones said.
During the time between Ye’s release and his Wednesday arrest, security and police presence were increased at schools such as Wootton and in the community, Montgomery County Public Schools spokesperson Chris Cram told MoCo360. The mounting evidence that police gathered in that timeframe from Ye’s internet searches and interactions on social media led to police making the arrest, Jones said.
According to charging documents, on March 21 Saffar executed a search warrant of Ye’s home and allegedly found numerous messages on his phone and computer in which he wrote, “My homicidal ideation has been getting worse lately to the point [that] I might act on it eventually,” and “I feel like shooting people would be fun and causing fear,” charging documents stated.
Saffar also gained access to Ye’s Google searches and found that he allegedly searched repeatedly for information about school shootings such as the Parkland and Sandy Hook mass shootings, according to charging documents.
Jones also shared at Friday’s press conference that there were allegedly conversations mentioning the Columbine shooting and drawings depicting shootings on Ye’s devices.
“We thought that that was something that was very damaging and really showed that these thoughts of ideation could come true,” Jones said.
An arrest warrant was obtained on April 16 and Ye was taken into custody the following day. Jones told MoCo360 that he could only share that Ye was arrested in the Rockville area and not at his residence.
During the conference, Jones also misstated that Ye’s father owned a gun that was locked up in the residence, and Ye could not gain access to said weapon. Later the police department corrected Jones’ statement and said that Ye’s father did not own a gun.
Nonetheless, Ye’s limited access to firearms and Maryland’s “strong gun laws” were praised by county leaders as a primary deterrent to Ye’s ability to carry out the planned shooting.
“I’m just thankful we live in a county in a state that has strong gun laws, it has collaboration, it has a strong commitment to keeping everyone safe,” councilmember Will Jawando (D-At-large) said at Friday’s conference. “In this instance, we can obviously always do better and coordinate more, but the system worked and we communicated with each other in a timely fashion to remove this threat and hopefully get this young man and his family the support they need.”
County Executive Marc Elrich (D) also said that the incident underscores the state of the mental health system in the country and could be a “wake-up call” to the county to make more serious investments.
“There just are not adequate facilities or practitioners to deal with the mental health issues that exist in our community,” Elrich said. “[Ye] clearly had mental health issues and I think it’d be worth our while to figure out when could we have known or when should we have possibly intervened.”
MCPS Chief Operating Officer Brian Hull also spoke at the conference and thanked county police and the FBI for their swift actions to address the matter and shared that the Wootton school community and nearby schools would have “supportive resources” available for students and staff.
Hull said that students and staff who may need to talk about and process this incident can speak with professionals such as psychologists, social workers and counselors. He added that there will be an “enhanced” security presence at the Wootton area schools in the coming days.
Ye’s trial is scheduled to begin June 3.