Indiana teen who shot teacher and student at a middle school in 2018 is ordered to treatment center

NOBLESVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A teenager who opened fire at a central Indiana middle school in 2018, wounding another student and a teacher, should go to a residential treatment center, a judge ordered Monday.

Hamilton Superior Court Judge Michael A. Casati ordered that the now-18-year-old be held in the Hamilton County Juvenile Service Center for 120 days while a probation department finds a suitable secure residential facility for him, news outlets reported.

“The juvenile is a risk to the community,” Casati said in a five-page order.

A hearing has been scheduled for Oct. 4 to determine where he will be placed.

He will be held in the facility for at least a year. The judge ordered him to appear for a permanency hearing in June 2024. Under Indiana law, he can be detained as a juvenile until the day before he turns 22.

The teenager, who was 13 at the time of the shooting, had been detained since shortly after he opened fire at Noblesville West Middle School in May 2018. He shot a seventh-grade science teacher and another 13-year-old student. The teacher, Jason Seaman, tackled and pinned him to the ground.

Seaman was shot three times, and the student, Ella Whistler, was shot seven times. No one was killed.

The teen was preparing to be released to his family when on March 20, prosecutors say, he assaulted a female counselor at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility by “fist-bumping” her breast, then joking about it with other juveniles. He was 17 at the time and was charged as a juvenile with battery.