Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, discussed the latest developments surrounding a story out of Maryland where police arrested a transgender high school student for a 129-page manifesto that included plans for at least two school shootings.
On Friday, Pappert reported that the student, Andrea Ye, was arrested this week as police say she wrote the 129-page manifesto and shared it with a friend, who then notified police of the document.
Ye (pictured above), a female who identifies as a transgender male, allegedly wrote about how she planned to carry out shootings at both her high school and former elementary school in the 129-page manifesto.
“It turns out Andrea Ye is a female to male transgender individual who prefers the name Alex and he/him pronouns. Police immediately went to the address in Maryland where Ye lived and the father would not let them in the house. Fortunately, police were able to get the manifesto through a court warrant, read some of the writings, read some of Ye’s other communications on the messaging app, Discord, where they were talking about this alleged desire to commit a school shooting, and were able to commit Ye to a mental facility for about a month. Then, she was released in the last few days and police were able to arrest her yesterday,” Pappert explained on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Pappert went on to explain how the Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich made headlines in regards to the case on Friday, as he disregarded the fact that Ye identified as transgender.
“Now, it’s making headlines today that in a press conference from county officials, the county executive kind of threw a fit when he was asked, ‘How come nobody is talking about the fact that he is transgender?’ He goes, ‘It’s not a lead. You never publish someone’s sexual orientation when you talk about them. Why you focus on them being transgender is beyond me. It is not a news story’,” Pappert said, noting how Ye’s case is at least the fourth would-be mass shooter that has recently been revealed by police.
Pappert also detailed how the information released in Ye’s case differs from that of the Covenant School killer in Nashville, whose manifesto has yet to be released to the public more than one year after the shooting that killed three children and three adults in Nashville.
“It was startling, almost, how much information they were willing to put forward. There is an 18-page arrest document where they went to the judge and asked for an arrest warrant. In this document, there is at least one page full of quotes from this manifesto,” Pappert said. “I think this speaks to how proactive the police were in Maryland, and this is, of course, a very heavily Democratic state, a couple miles outside the swamp. It’s not some state that I’m eager to puff up, but it speaks to the fact that police were willing to get out ahead of this to take the threat seriously, to arrest this person before any violence could have happened, and to be forthright with the public, even though for whatever reason they are trying to hide the fact that he is a transgender person.”
“They are willing to come out and say things that, by the way, are not very good for the narrative. In one part of the manifesto, Ye talks about, ‘I would rather become a serial killer than a mass shooter. Serial killers are romanticized a lot more. They get tons of love letters and Netflix documentaries about them, while mass shooters are just basically brushed off unless they’re truly unique or good looking.’ So this is not necessarily something that a liberal person would want out. Ye talked about how they knew that the actions being planned would cause gun control pushes and yet the police were still willing to be on the side of transparency,” Pappert added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
