Latest news with #TrinityShockley
Boston Globe
31-03-2025
- Boston Globe
Their kids died at Sandy Hook. Their tip line prevents school shootings.
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Trinity Shockley was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and threatening to commit terrorism. It was the 18th credible school shooting threat interrupted by a tip to the Say Something phone line or app since 2018, and the second so far this year. Shockley's lawyer did not return a request for comment. Advertisement The push to stop murders in classrooms by families who've experienced them continues to yield success stories even as the federal government is dismantling some tools aimed at preventing school shootings. The United States saw a sharp rise in such events starting in 2018, a Washington Post database shows, when the number of school shootings soared to 30 after annually averaging about half that. The grim figure increased to more than 40 in 2021 and 2022. But the number has dropped to 33 and 34 in the past two years, as Sandy Hook Promise pushes to spread word of the program through annual trainings and encourages students to report warning signs that could preface something worse. Advertisement Police and school officials around the country say they are happy to have the help. In Prince William County, Virginia, police receive tips 'almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day,' said Lt. Kimberly M. Mercer of the police youth services bureau. In December, when a Prince William student allegedly shared detailed plans about carrying out a school shooting, the Sandy Hook tip line was notified. Prince William police responded that night, Mercer said, followed by involvement with the school's threat assessment team and an increased police presence at the school. 'Situations like these happen more often than people realize,' Mercer said, 'and having a structured response process, starting with students speaking up, Sandy Hook Promise filtering critical tips, and law enforcement stepping in when needed, is essential for preventing violence before it happens.' In Largo, Florida, police in January responded after the Say Something line received more than 40 tips when a teen allegedly threatened to shoot up his high school in a social media post, and the teen was arrested. 'Countless lives were saved, thanks to your quick thinking and for taking it seriously,' Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Mark Barden, whose son Daniel Barden was slain in 2012, said in a video thanking the students at Largo High School and the first responders who intervened. In addition to the 18 school shootings stopped since 2018, tips to the Say Something line have prevented more than 700 teen suicides nationwide, using in-school training sessions to teach students how to recognize a threat and report it, the group says. Nicole Hockley, also a co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise and parent of Newtown victim Dylan Hockley, told of a recent case in which a tipster called to report a suicidal friend and spoke to a crisis counselor for several hours. Eventually, Hockley said the student told the counselor, ''I'm not calling you about my friend, it's me and I just overdosed,' so we were able to get to school to get to that child.' Advertisement Sandy Hook Promise opened a 24-hour crisis center in Miami to handle phone and online tips, established relationships with law enforcement agencies and school districts around the country, and helped coordinate the training of more than 31 million participants, Hockley said. Last year, the program trained 5.7 million students, estimated to be about 10 percent of the K-12 universe, and they hope to double that to 11 million per year. 'We're just everywhere that we can possibly be,' Hockley said, 'so that people realize that this isn't a hopeless issue, that there are actions that everyone can take. And if you're not an activist, that's okay. But everyone can learn warning signs and everyone can have conversations with each other.' The Post has compiled a database of school shootings since the Columbine, Colorado, shootings in 1999, when two teens killed 13 students and one teacher. Since then, there have been 428 school shootings involving gunfire at a primary or secondary school during school hours. In those shootings, 216 children, educators and other people have been killed, and another 487 have been injured. Advertisement Hockley said Sandy Hook Promise uses 'a very strict set of data criteria for us to be able to say this was a validated, credible, planned school shooting attack that was stopped as a result of our program.' 'I come from a marketing background,' Hockley said. 'I didn't know anything about gun violence prevention or school safety when my son was killed at Sandy Hook. But I wanted to make a difference.' She said, 'So many people were focusing on the policy end of gun violence. We decided that we would do more than that.' The group's anonymous reporting system, which also has a phone app, has received 328,803 tips since 2018, said Aimee Thunberg, head of communications for Sandy Hook Promise. The tips range beyond school shootings, Hockley said, to include substance abuse, bullying and self-harm. 'We've had the entire spectrum of violence against young people and self-harm that come into our crisis center,' Hockley said, 'as a result of training that we did for kids in terms of how to recognize signs of someone who needs help and tell a trusted adult or to use our anonymous reporting system.' Chase Ferrell, the auxiliary services and safety officer for Johnston County, North Carolina, public schools, said the district of about 37,500 students receives up to 250 referrals a year from the reporting system. He said the call takers at the crisis center in Miami are trained to handle teenagers in crisis, while his staff works quickly with police and school officials. 'It's one of the most proactive tools out there, in my opinion. It allows us to curb incidents before they become crisis situations,' Ferrell said. 'There have been a couple of occasions where we have made a save, if you will, and that was a student that was in the throes of wanting to do self-harm. And we were able to stop it. And if it weren't for that tip line, we may be without a student.' Advertisement Ferrell said his school district requires training of all students from grades six through 12 in recognizing, and reporting, situations where a student appears ready to harm others or themselves. 'The first two or three weeks after that training, we get some bogus tips and some things that drive us crazy,' Ferrell said. 'But after that, you really get pertinent information that can be very, very helpful.' Hockley said Sandy Hook Promise chose education and awareness programs 'because we know that kind of violence prevention has a long historical base of evidence to prove that it works.' One way the group spreads the word is through public service announcements, including a new one featuring a child holding a beloved teddy bear, juxtaposed with the many teddy bears left at the mourning sites of school shootings. 'We had over 60,000 teddy bears that came into Newtown after the tragedy,' Hockley said. 'We don't want teddy bears to be a memorial. We want them to be companions to people. We want to let kids be kids and not have fear of going to school, or fear that they could end up in a school shooting.'
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Mooresville school shooting plot shows long-term toll of Indiana's opioid crisis
In 2021-22, Indiana hit a record high number of Hoosier deaths due to drug overdoses, 2,755. According to last Friday's publicly available probable cause affidavit, one of those deaths was Trinity Shockley's mother. Shockley was a senior in Mooresville Schools until Feb. 20 when her plans for a Valentine's Day mass shooting in the cafeteria were discovered. This is the same school my daughter attends, the same cafeteria my daughter would have been sitting in with her friends during the planned attack. Hicks: How to create equal opportunities in post-DEI Indiana More than 320,000 children lost a parent to drug overdoses during the opioid crisis, according to the most recent data. Shockley's case is a stark reminder that efforts to combat the opioid crisis have entered a new phase. While the first two years of support have focused on supporting addicts directly, a better understanding of and support for the children of addicts deserves attention. More than 57,500 Hoosier children were affected by the opioid crisis, with the highest concentration in rural areas. This is more than the number of children affected by autism and childhood diabetes combined. The effects of having a parent that is an addict or has substance usage disorder is widely studied and very clear: Higher rates of child abuse and neglect Lower academic achievement Higher rates of family breakdown Higher rates of mental health issues Lower rates of family involvement and support Increased rates of incarceration as an adult Increased rates of addiction and substance usage disorder as adults The emotional and long-term toll of navigating life with a parent that is an addict is not just overwhelming Hoosier children and families, but also costing our state systems billions. According to the most recent estimates, children with a parent that's an addict cost our state $37,000 in health care, $44,000 in child welfare and social programs, and $186,000 in special education costs. Pediatricians, schools, therapists, and social services are increasingly seeing more high-need cases at greater frequencies than ever before. This means state agencies are overwhelmed by providing services and supporting kids displaying high acuity behaviors. These trends are not set to slow anytime soon. By 2030, the innocent victims of the opioid crisis are set to have cost the state $10.5 billion. Indiana received $980 million in opioid settlement dollars to be doled out over 18 years. If there is one thing we have learned from this crisis, it's that only treating the addict is ineffective because it leaves family members like Shockley untreated. We've also learned that rural areas were hit far harder than urban areas. The challenges to providing support in rural areas have proven to be far more difficult and have shown less efficacy to date. To curb the systemic impact and give these innocent victims a shot at a healthy future, we need to work smarter not harder. We need to be investing opioid settlement dollars into evidence-based, data-driven approaches that support inner agency collaborations of all the systems that support the children of addicts. We need infrastructure that ensures data from each of these agencies are talking to each other in tangible ways. We need to focus on efforts that coordinate data and responses across health care, law enforcement, child welfare agencies and education to reduce redundancies and ensure kids are getting the best we have to offer. We need to support innovative approaches that address academic achievement, health outcomes and workforce development needs in the professional areas meeting the needs of children who have a parent battling addiction. Most importantly, rural Indiana needs more support. As a Mooresville mom, it's difficult to express my gratitude to Mooresville Schools and the police department for their handling of last week's incident. Their quick and decisive action ensured that all the children in our community were safe. As an educational professional who has been working with kids with mental health needs for more than 20 years, I can't help but be impressed by the teachers, counselors, administrators, school nurses, coaches, staff members and officers who served bravely last week. If you follow Mooresville Schools on social media, you know their hashtag is #BeMoore. After last week, I would argue that their hashtag should be #DoingMoore because they are clearly doing more with less to support our kids. Addie Angelov is the co-founder and CEO of the Paramount Health Data Project. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Mooresville school shooting plot points to opioid crisis | Opinion
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Yahoo
Mooresville shooting suspect appears in court
HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) — The Mooresville, Indiana high school student accused of plotting to kill her classmates on Valentine's Day appeared in a bond hearing on Tuesday. 18-year-old Trinity Shockley is charged with multiple felonies, including conspiracy to commit murder and terrorism. During the hearing, evidence was presented to the court arguing why Shockley is a danger to society if bail is met. Shockley's bond is set for $250,000. Prosecutors requested that Shockley be given mental health treatment. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for mid-May and a jury trial is set for June 10. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Yahoo
Washington County Sheriff's Office helps thwart school shooting plot in Indiana, authorities say
Wisconsin authorities helped avert catastrophe on Valentine's Day by assisting with an investigation that thwarted a teenager's school shooting plot in Indiana. Earlier that week, the Washington County Sheriff's Office investigated a 19-year-old woman from the Town of Addison who ultimately was not behind the plot but helped lead authorities to the main suspect, according to a Feb. 14 news release from the sheriff's office. The Addison woman had been part of Discord group about school shooters with the main suspect, who had possessed weapons and photographs of previous mass shooters, according to an anonymous tipster. On Feb. 12, Trinity Shockley, 18, was arrested in Mooresville, Indiana, and confessed to both the school shooting plot and a desire to murder her friend, according to the sheriff's office. Shockley, who goes by the name Jamie, was charged with one felony count of conspiracy to commit murder that does not result in death, according to Indiana court records. She also faces two felony counts for threats to commit terrorism. She is being held without bond, although a contested bond hearing is scheduled for Feb. 18. According to the Washington County Sheriff's Office: An anonymous tip about threats to commit a school shooting on Valentine's Day was received on Monday, Feb. 10, by the Sandy Hook Promise Violence Hotline, an anonymous tip line launched by parents who lost children in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Hotline operators forwarded the tip ― which attributed the shooting threats to two social media accounts on Discord and Snapchat ― to the FBI. The FBI had a difficult time tracking the Discord account, but was able to trace the Snapchat account to the 19-year-old woman from the Town of Addison, Washington County Sheriff's Lt. Tim Kemps told the Journal Sentinel on Monday. The agency passed the tip to the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the Washington County Sheriff's Office Dispatch Center, the release said. The 911 dispatcher working at the time recognized the seriousness of the threat and immediately contacted the shift supervisor to place the Addison suspect's house under surveillance. Investigators worked throughout the evening on Feb. 10 to communicate with the tipster who was in real-time communication with the actual suspect in Indiana and shared screenshots of their conversations that included pictures of weapons, magazines, a tactical vest, and screenshots of the suspect's bedroom which had numerous photographs of past school shooters. The next morning, the Sheriff's Office Multi-Jurisdictional SWAT team conducted a search warrant on the 19-year-old's residence. She fully cooperated with authorities, and investigators quickly learned that she was not the person making the reported threats, and there were no local schools at risk of being targeted. Instead, she was connected to the actual suspect via a social media chat group about school shooters. Investigators returned to the informant and coached them into obtaining the true suspect's phone number, which revealed their actual location in Indiana. This information was forward to the FBI's Indianapolis Field Office. Shockley was arrested in Mooresville on Feb. 12. Washington County Sheriff Martin Schulteis expressed deep gratitude toward both the tipster and his own agency. 'As I sit back and think about the gravity of this investigation and what horrific outcomes could have occurred if it does not play out the way it did, I cannot help but be humbled by the dedication and performance of my staff,' Schulteis said in the release. The Sheriff's Office said no charges related to the shooting threat are expected to be filed against the 19-year-old from Addison, as authorities have not uncovered evidence to suggest she was connected to the school shooting plot, Kemps told the Journal Sentinel. On Monday, Kemps said the Sheriff's Office is still conducting a threat assessment but has so far not uncovered any threats of violence from the Addison woman. Asked about the tipster, Kemps said they were a person involved in these groups out of interest in true crime. "It was someone monitoring these groups, I think, to do good," Kemps said. "They certainly did good in this instance. When they were concerned that there was actually something going on, they reported it immediately." Contact Claudia Levens at clevens@ Follow her on X at @levensc13. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin authorities helped thwart a school shooting plot in Indiana
CNN
15-02-2025
- CNN
Here's what helped thwart a potential Valentine's Day school shooting in Indiana
A call to an anonymous tip line created after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, set off a chain of events that helped thwart a potential Valentine's Day mass shooting in Indiana, authorities say. Trinity Shockley, 18, is facing conspiracy to commit murder and two terrorism-related charges after being accused of plotting a school shooting on Friday at Mooresville High School in Morgan County, according to police and court records. Shockley is charged under the name Trinity but is transgender and goes by the name Jamie, according to an affidavit obtained by CNN affiliate WISH. It's unclear which pronouns Shockley uses. Shockley's arrest came after a person contacted the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System on Monday. The tipster said a friend had access to an AR-15 rifle, had just ordered a bulletproof vest and admired Nikolas Cruz, who carried out a February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 14 students and three school staff members. The reporting system operated by Sandy Hook Promise, the violence prevention group launched by parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook massacre, then notified the FBI per their protocol, and sent them screen shots of messages Shockley appeared to have sent on the messaging app Discord, according to an arrest affidavit. The FBI passed the tip to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, as they initially believed the threats originated from that state. Wisconsin DOJ then notified investigators with the Washington County Sheriff's Office. Their detectives determined a Wisconsin woman, whom the tipster believed to be the one making threats, was not the suspect and there were no local schools at risk of being targeted. Further investigation found that Wisconsin woman had allegedly been in contact with Shockley via a chat group about school shooters. The woman wasn't arrested or charged and was released from custody after being interviewed by investigators. Detectives were then able to coach the tipster, who was still in real-time communication with Shockley, to get a phone number from Shockley, and authorities determined the suspect was in Indiana, officials said. The sheriff's office shared its information with the FBI's Indianapolis office. The tipster provided investigators with screenshots of conversations with Shockley, pictures of weapons, magazines, a tactical vest and screenshots of Shockley's bedroom, which had numerous photographs of past school shooters, the Washington County Sheriff's Office said. Shockley spoke with a school counselor Tuesday at the end of the school day and expressed an 'obsession' with and sexual attraction to Cruz, the affidavit said. After the conversation, the counselor contacted the school's administration and a 'proactive response plan was being scheduled for prior to the next school day,' Mooresville Schools said in a statement. Police executed a search warrant at Shockley's home on Wednesday, according to the affidavit. Shockley was arrested and is currently being held in the Morgan County Jail, police said. 'I am incredibly grateful for the quick response of our local, state, and federal law enforcement whose actions prevented what could have been a devastating situation,' Superintendent of Mooresville Schools Jake Allen said in a statement. Shockley has retained an attorney and will be held before appearing at a bond hearing Tuesday at 8 a.m., Cassie Mellady, chief deputy prosecutor for Morgan County, told CNN. The Say Something Anonymous Reporting System is an around-the-clock crisis center staffed by trained counselors who review tips submitted by phone, online or through their mobile app. Sandy Hook Promise set up the reporting system to 'submit secure, anonymous safety concerns to help someone who may hurt themselves or others,' according to its website. The tip line page lists some of the most common behaviors and incidents to report. Those include acts of violence with or without weapons, bragging about weapons or a planned attack, and threats seen on social media. Once a tipster provides the information they have about a safety or mental health concern, a crisis counselor reviews that information, Sandy Hook Promise says. More than 287,000 tips have been received by the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System over the years, Nick Dmitrovich, a Sandy Hook Promise spokesperson, told CNN. With the prevention of this most recent tragedy, Sandy Hook Promise's reporting system has averted at least 17 credible planned school shootings and 'averted countless other acts of violence, suicide, and self-harm since its founding,' the organization told CNN. A prevented attack is determined by assessing where the initial information came, and whether law enforcement confirmed the threat was credible and there was access to a weapon and a plan, Dmitrovich said. The anonymous reporting system also has led to the prevention of numerous instances of suicide, according to a study published last year in the journal Pediatrics and funded by the Chaiken Foundation and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 'This is a bittersweet day for us. While we remember the lives tragically taken at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School seven years ago today, we are grateful that the Mooresville community was spared,' Nicole Hockley, co-founder and co-CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, said in a statement Friday. Her son was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. 'This story illustrates the lifesaving impact of recognizing warning signs, taking it seriously, and acting immediately to get help. It only takes one person to 'say something' for lives to be saved. Threats are never a joke,' she added.
