Iowa police arrested a trans-identifying 19-year-old on Monday and charged her with a “threat of terrorism” after she revealed in therapy that she wanted to shoot up an elementary school, The Daily Wire has learned.
The Norwalk Police Department announced Monday that it had arrested Margaret Anderson after being made aware last week of a “potential threat” to Oviatt Elementary School, located in Norwalk, Iowa. In a release, the department said that Atwood has been charged with a “Threat of Terrorism” under Iowa Code 708A.5, and had been processed into the Warren County Jail.
Anderson is a 19-year-old female who identifies as a transgender man, Warren County Attorney Doug Eichholz confirmed to The Daily Wire on Tuesday. The police department said on Monday that Margaret also went by Maxwell, raising initial suspicions that gender identity was at play in the case.
Eichholz said that the case arose out of statements that Anderson made to her therapist during the course of her “regular treatment.” The therapist then reported the statements to the Des Moines Police Department, he said, which forwarded the information to the Norwalk Police Department in her hometown.
“And then the investigation took off from there,” he explained.
According to Eichholz, the complaint about Anderson says: “The defendant stated that she had thoughts that she wanted to take a gun to Oviatt Elementary School in Norwalk, at 11 am through the cafeteria, and shoot children.”
The complaint did not contain context as to why Anderson was motivated to shoot children, the Warren County Attorney said. He noted that after Anderson shared these thoughts, she was immediately entered into Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines, which has a mental health facility attached. She was then arrested on Monday, Eichholz said, released Tuesday morning to house arrest with restrictions including a GPS bracelet, and is currently on pretrial release.
Shawn Holloway, superintendent of Norwalk Community School District, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Courtesy of the Norwalk County Sheriff’s Department.
The revelation comes more than a year after a trans-identifying shooter killed three children and three adults at Covenant Christian School in Nashville in March 2023. News that the shooter identified as transgender caused many in the mainstream media to suggest, even as families were newly mourning the victims, that the shooter’s transgender identity was irrelevant and that the LGBTQ community was in danger from reprisals.
A number of LGBTQ groups told Newsweek that the publication of the shooter’s manifesto could have “serious consequences,” and NBC News published a story saying that “fear pervades Tennessee’s trans community amid focus on Nashville shooter’s gender identity,” citing a transgender activist who reportedly told the publication, “We were already fearing for our lives. Now, it’s even worse.”
The FBI would claim that it withheld the shooter’s 100-page journal in the name of public safety, suggesting that it would lead to “conspiracy theories” and “inaccurate information.” The Tennessee Star published the shooter’s entire journal in early September, and the writings revealed the shooter was obsessed with ideas of transgenderism and white privilege, and frequently wrote about her autism and depression.
