An 18-year-old waitress in Oklahoma bragged about her brand-new AK-47 during a shift at the restaurant where she worked, and showed her co-worker a video of her firing the weapon.
Then she claimed to have other plans for that gun: namely, shoot 400 people at her former high school “for fun.” Her co-worker contacted law enforcement, who took Alexis Wilson into custody Monday morning and charged her with making a terroristic threat against McAlester High School, a felony. She’s pleaded not guilty.
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Police discovered the AK-47 in Wilson's bedroom, along with six magazines and a 12-gauge shotgun. During an interview with police, she said her comments had been taken out of context, claiming that she was relaying an anecdote about a friend who had made a threat to shoot 40 people for fun, according to a local ABC affiliate.
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Wilson’s arrest comes about six weeks after a string of mass shootings in California, Texas, and Ohio. After those shootings, dozens of young white men have been arrested for making similar shooting threats — and in some cases, police uncovered large caches of weapons.
As a young woman, Wilson is an outlier: Only nine out of 250 active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2017 involved a female shooter, according to the FBI.
Nonetheless, police believe that Wilson posed a threat. She was previously suspended from McAlester High School in 2013, once for having a knife at school and another time for wearing swastikas, according to the Washington Post.
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In her booking photo, the Post reported, Wilson was also wearing a T-shirt that made a reference to the Anarchist Cookbook, a 1971 book that has inspired previous mass shooters to violence.
"She had some problems,” McAlester Public School Superintendent Randy Hughes told local news outlets. “But I am not aware of anything that would draw attention as a potential for something like this.”
After her suspensions, Wilson completed a military academy program in Oklahoma. She’d tried to re-enroll in McAlester High School this semester but was told she’d have to wait to start classes.
She’s now being held on a $250,000 bond. If convicted, she could face up to a year in a county jail, plus a fine of up to $5,000.
18-Year-Old Woman Arrested for Threatening to Shoot Up Her High School ‘for Fun’
Cops found an AK-47 and a 12-gauge shotgun in her bedroom.
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