The Noblesville West Middle School shooter, who wounded a student and a teacher in 2018, will be released from court monitoring on April 11, his 21st birthday.
The former Noblesville student attended his last court hearing on Monday where Hamilton County Circuit Court Judge Andrew Bloch approved his release from being GPS monitored at home.
WFYI is not identifying the shooter because he was charged and sentenced as a juvenile.
Bloch said the court “rather proficiently” researched a way to keep him under court monitoring, but state law bars the juvenile court from further monitoring anyone past age 21, requiring the court to end the GPS monitoring.
“What I'm telling you today is a lot of people, when they come to court for the last time, it's cause for celebration, and they think I don't have to do anything anymore. That is not your reality, in my opinion,” Bloch said during the hearing.
He was 13 when he opened fire inside Noblesville West Middle School on May 25, 2018. He took two handguns from his parents' home safe and shot multiple rounds in his seventh-grade classroom.
The shots fired injured seventh-grade teacher Jason Seaman and student Ella Whistler. Seaman was also the one who tackled the boy. No one was killed.
Evidence at the original 2018 court hearing revealed that he had recorded a video the day of the shooting, displaying the guns and saying, “I’m not killing myself. I have to take other people’s lives before I take mine.”
He was eventually sent to an Indiana Department of Correction juvenile facility where he underwent mandatory programming until he was 18 years old. Then the teenager was released to his parents for at-home detention with GPS monitoring.
A delinquency petition was filed against him in 2023 after a a corrections employee at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility said he “fist-bumped” her breast.
The young man’s attorney, Benjamin Jaffe, said during the court hearing that he believes his client still wants to continue with therapy and counseling, and considers his parents' involvement a crucial factor in his rehabilitation.
“There's no undoing what he did, but I think everyone involved in this wants him to be a better person, and never wants him to be in that place again,” Jaffe said.
Jaffe’s client did not give any comment during Monday’s hearing. Jaffe also told WFYI after the hearing that his client had no additional comments.
The 2018 shooting is among the most prominent school shooting in Indiana. It spurred the Noblesville Schools to pursue a $50 million school safety referendum to pay for a wide range of school safety provisions and mental health services.
While Judge Block agreed that the young adult had made improvements, he said the community still feels the impact of the shooting.
“So while you're improving in some way, this community continues to suffer to a lesser degree, because thankfully, you've not had an incident quite like yours,” Bloch said.
Still, Bloch said the results of the case are “unsatisfactory.”
“It's just all the things that I have to weigh versus your best interests, our community's best interests, society's best interest,” Bloch said.
The former Noblesville student is also barred by court order from owning a handgun while under the age of 23 and barred from possessing a firearm while under the age of 28.
Contact Government Reporter Caroline Beck at cbeck@wfyi.org.