She Slipped Her Hand in a Gun Safe and Now Faces Life

Police in Allegan County, Michigan, say 15-year-old Mya Barron went far beyond idle threats when she allegedly plotted a mass attack on Allegan High School, the same campus she once attended before switching to online classes. Investigators allege Barron stole her mother’s Glock pistol and two loaded magazines, then described online a plan to ram her father’s vehicle, filled with gasoline and fireworks, through the school cafeteria windows. She allegedly wrote that she wanted to “shoot the cop in the lunch room, and just go trigger happy on anyone I see.”

The FBI’s Detroit field office tipped off local police after detecting the threats. When officers arrived at her home, Barron reportedly admitted the plan and revealed she had hidden the stolen gun in a Sega box. Her mother believed the pistol was locked in a safe, but Barron told officers she could slip her hand inside and pull it out.

On October 31st, prosecutors asked the court to order a competency evaluation for Barron, who is being charged as an adult. Prosecutors said the assessment was warranted due to potential state-of-mind concerns and the same personal-safety issues that led to Barron’s confinement in the Allegan County Juvenile Center. A motion hearing was postponed, and her preliminary examination is now scheduled for December 4th.

Barron remains held on a $75,000 bond and faces four counts. Among them are a terrorism threat charge, firearm offenses, and, most notably, safebreaking, which under Michigan law is a potential life sentence.

Yes, the most severe charge Barron faces, the one that could, in theory, put her away for life, isn’t the threat of mass violence. It’s ‘safe breaking.’ A crime codified in 1931 when Michigan lawmakers were trying to keep up with a new breed of criminal, such as violent Depression-era bank robbers like John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Barker gang.

The law, written nearly a century ago, was designed for people who literally blew open bank vaults with dynamite or pried them apart with crowbars. It was meant to stop professional thieves from raiding post offices, treasuries, and businesses. It was never meant to apply to a teenager reaching into a loose-latching home gun safe.

Yet that’s where we are. Barron allegedly managed to slip her hand into her mother’s safe, retrieve the Glock, and hide it in her bedroom. For that, she’s facing a charge that, on paper, carries the same maximum penalty as murder. She didn’t dynamite a vault. She didn’t cut through a bank’s reinforced steel door. She didn’t even damage the safe.

That’s the absurdity of Michigan’s safebreaking law, a relic from a time when safes were the centerpieces of small-town banks and armed robberies were national news. The law makes no distinction between a professional heist crew and a teenager testing a family safe’s latch.

And while I’m all for holding Barron accountable for an alleged plot that could have been catastrophic, the idea that her worst potential sentence stems from opening a gun safe, not planning a school shooting, is staggering. Justice should reflect intent, danger, and context. This law doesn’t.

Michigan’s safebreaking statute is an antique from another era, written for a Bonnie-and-Clyde world that doesn’t exist anymore. If the courts can’t tell the difference between a kid slipping her hand into a gun box and a gangster blowing open a vault, then maybe it’s time the legislature revisited who this law is really meant to punish.

(Sources)