Mom notified authorities after finding her teenage son’s notebook, which detailed his plans to carry out a shooting at his high school.
After finding the then-17-year-old’s journal, which contained a detailed plan to commit mass murder at his high school, the mother made the unthinkable decision to turn her own son.
“Your first instinct as a parent is to protect your child,” the mother, Nichole Schubert, reportedly told Good Morning America. “But at that point, I felt like if he is actually going to do these things, he would be safer in jail.”
During an interview with GMA, the mother talk about the extremely difficult decision she made in 2019. “It was very descriptive. It was just heartbreaking.”
While cleaning her house, she made a horrifying discovery. Schubert found her son’s notebook, which contained detailed plans for murdering her before launching an attack on his Washington state high school.
Schubert was on the phone with the police within a few hours. She wanted to protect not only her son but also the hundreds of people he planned to attack.
“It wasn’t just about me and him at that point. It was about a whole school – hundreds of people, hundreds of kids, children,” the mother also said.
Schubert gave police her son’s notebook and told them her son, who was 17 at the time, had previously made what she thought was a pipe bomb.
The teen was arrested and pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges. He had a mental evaluation, followed by a rehabilitation program and community service.
Schubert has a message for all parents after turning him into the police.
“Just be aware and watch for signs. Kids will normally tell you by their actions when something is wrong.”
The mother described how she made the difficult decision not only to save the lives of others but also of her own son. Though her 20-year-old son is still upset with her, she claims the intervention has put his life back on track.
“As hard as it was to turn him in, I don’t have any regrets,” she told The Wall Street Journal.
The mother described finding her son’s journal in their home in September 2019, where he detailed his plans. Her son allegedly wrote in the journal about carrying out a shooting on April 20, 2020.
He intended to start his massacre at 5 a.m. that morning by murdering his mother and her boyfriend and to begin shooting up his school later that day at 12:20 p.m.
The mother reportedly found what appeared to be a pipe bomb and bomb-making materials in her son’s bedroom a few months before discovering the journal, according to the Daily Mail.
According to reports, Schubert’s son pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and a felony threat to bomb or injure property. He allegedly maintained that the contents of the journal were merely a fantastical story he’d written, not something he intended to do.
He received a mental evaluation and was sentenced to 18 months of community supervision as well as 20 hours of community service.
