Noblesville shooter sentenced . . .
By TIM McNICHOLAS
WISH-TV | wishtv.com
A judge has sentenced the 13-year-old who shot and injured his classmate and teacher last May at Noblesville West Middle School.
Judge Paul Felix gave the boy a sentence with the Indiana Department of Corrections until he is 18, unless the IDOC decides the boy should be released sooner. He did not specify which juvenile facility will house the boy, and he said he will place the teenager on probation when he is released.
Felix choked up as he spoke directly to the shooter.
“You wanted devastation. An inexplicable, horrible tragedy for the ages,” Felix said.
Felix said the shooter needs extensive psychiatric treatment and likely medication. The teenager sat in an orange and white striped uniform next to his parents. His mother patted him on the back after the judge delivered the sentence.
The boy admitted in court to shooting his teacher, Jason Seaman, and his 13-year-old classmate Ella Whistler.
Alisonn Lowry said her daughter was in the classroom that day.
“I’m glad we are where we are, but it’s been really hard on the kids that were in that classroom,” Lowry said.
Investigators say the boy asked to use the bathroom during a test, took two guns from his backpack, then came back and shot Seaman and Whistler.
The shooter apologized in a written statement last week. Felix said today he “rejects” that statement. He said the boy “said the right words” but did not show remorse.
“Our client is a hard kid to read,” the shooter’s attorney, Chris Eskew, said. “I do believe he is remorseful for what he did.”
Eskew said he expects his client to be released from the IDOC sooner than his 18th birthday. He argued in court he should be treated not by the state, but at a residential treatment center in Dyer, Ind.
He said he is “concerned about the resources available within the Department of Corrections.”
“He’s going to get through these exams and through his treatment. He’s not someone incapable of that. He does have issues he needs to work through and hopefully he gets through those,” Eskew said.
Eskew said he does not know why the boy did what he did and the judge said he does not know either.
The judge said his school record shows at least 21 marks of misconduct.
He said the boy lit a bucket on fire at his home a week before the shooting and his mother was so upset she took him to the fire department for a safety lesson. The judge did not say whether he feels that incident played a role in the boy’s decision to commit the shooting.
“It is hard for anyone within the community to understand,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Lee Buckingham said.
Buckingham’s team played a video in court last week, during the first day of the hearing, showing the boy before the shooting. He is seen with a gun in the video.
“Tomorrow is Friday. You know what that means,” the boy said. “I need to take other peoples’ lives before I take my own.”
A Noblesville police officer testified that he also discovered the teenager searched online the day before the shooting for the phrases “Noblesville Middle School blueprint” and “What was the largest mass shooting in America?”
Seaman testified last week that he threw a miniature basketball at the boy after he started shooting. He then tackled the teenager, pinned him down and removed weapons from his pockets.
Ben Jaffe, a lawyer for the juvenile, said Tuesday that prosecutors made it clear that the boy’s family owned the guns.
Prosecutors played a video last week of the shooter at the juvenile detention center in Hamilton County building something with Legos that resembled a rifle.
Felix emphasized to the shooter that the victims’ lives will never be the same. Whistler’s parents testified that she is still recovering, can’t currently play volleyball, and sometimes needs help getting dressed. Her right arm may never get back to 100 percent, according to her mother.
Seaman testified last week that he is also recovering. He was not in court.
The judge ordered that the boy cannot try to contact Seaman or Whistler. He also praised Noblesville Schools for training their staff on how to respond to a threat. Seaman said the training helped him respond to the incident.