2nd TCC Teen Charged in Indiana School Shooting Plot

As I mentioned in my previous post about this, Shelby County, Indiana, nearly became the next stop on the Columbine nostalgia tour. And it turns out, one tourist wasn’t enough.

Let me back up for any newcomers.

Early in this past January, 17-year-old Alexis Pickett of Rush County, Indiana, was arrested and charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and intimidation. Prosecutors allege she was planning a mass shooting at Morristown Jr./Sr. High School, with a target date of May 25, 2026. She is currently being held on a one million dollar cash bond.

Her trial is set to begin on April 20th.

Yep. That April 20th.

If that date means nothing to you, welcome to your first encounter with a Columbiner. If it sent a chill down your spine, then you already know what we’re dealing with here.

So what exactly is a Columbiner? It is not simply someone with a morbid interest in true crime. A Columbiner is someone who has crossed the line from curiosity into adoration. They worship Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the cowards who murdered thirteen people at Columbine High School on April 20th, 1999, before killing themselves. Columbiners adopt the mythology surrounding those two and internalize the debunked narrative that Harris and Klebold were bullied underdogs who finally snapped. They base their entire identity around that of a school shooter. Many of them have rebranded themselves as members of the so-called True Crime Community, or TCC. It’s the same obsession with an updated label.

Court documents describe Pickett as being deeply embedded in this world. She communicated on Discord, Telegram, and TikTok to other TCC adherents. She collected images of Harris and Klebold. Not only that, but she drew pictures of them. For Halloween, she dressed as a school shooter, specifically mimicking a character from Zero Day, a film inspired by Columbine. Her phone was filled with photos of the Columbine gunmen.

This is not edgy cosplay. This is textbook Columbiner behavior.

Investigators say Pickett suggested the shooting happen around graduation and settled on May 25th, even though graduation was scheduled for May 23rd. The date does not appear to have any particular significance within TCC circles, as far as I have been able to determine, outside of it being Memorial Day. Then again, Columbiners aren’t typically the brightest bananas in the bunch. If anyone out there has a theory, I’m listening.

Now here’s where it gets worse.

Pickett did not plan to do this alone.

On February 11th, 2026, the Shelby County Prosecutor announced the arrest of a second suspect, 17-year-old Melanie Little of Corinth, Mississippi. Little has been charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. She was taken before a judge and refused to waive extradition to Indiana. She is currently being held without bond pending resolution of the extradition process.

Little and Pickett had been communicating extensively through Discord and Telegram. In those messages, the two discussed the shooting in detail, agreed that two shooters would increase their likelihood of “success,” and Little reportedly fantasized about making the attack “bigger and more successful than Columbine.”

That last part is worth sitting with for a moment, because Columbine, as many people may not know, was not originally conceived as a school shooting. Harris and Klebold planned it primarily as a bombing. They intended to detonate propane tank bombs in the school cafeteria, killing hundreds, and then shoot the survivors as they fled. The bombs failed to detonate. What followed was horrific enough, but their original vision was something closer to a domestic terrorist attack.

Which brings us to what Little allegedly wanted.

According to court documents, Little contemplated making IEDs and Molotov cocktails and fantasized about getting her hands on grenades or “lethal gas,” whatever that means. At one point she allegedly talked about upgrading the whole thing from a school shooting into a, quote, “full-scale terror attack,” noting that the tiny town would be underprepared to respond. That’s not random sadism; that’s someone who had studied Columbine, understood what Harris originally wanted to do, and wanted to one-up it.

The pair also shared videos with each other as part of the planning. Pickett recorded the inside of Morristown Jr./Sr. High School, mapping hallways, entrances, and dead ends. She sent the footage to Little so she would know how to get in and out of the building. Little, for her part, sent a video of herself shouting that she was going to go to Indiana and shoot up her friend’s school. In a follow-up video, she reportedly talked about killing herself during the shooting and said she did not want her body shipped back home.

Both of them discussed dying at the scene, explicitly mirroring how Harris and Klebold took the coward’s way out.

On the subject of weapons, Pickett claimed she could get her hands on her father’s .357 magnum revolver. As for Little, she mentioned that her stepfather still collected firearms despite being on probation.

Nothing says ‘responsible gun owner’™ quite like maintaining an arsenal while you are on probation.

Earlier coverage of this case, including my own post, referred to Pickett’s alleged co-conspirator as “Nathan,” described as a 17-year-old in Mississippi. I want to address that directly.

Melanie Little used the online alias “Nathan.”

This does not mean Melanie Little is transgender. I would like to be unambiguous about that. The use of a masculine or gender-neutral alias by a young woman in Columbiner and TCC spaces is extremely common. Many female members of these communities adopt alternative gender identities or masculine handles specifically to avoid the grooming and harassment that is rampant in those spaces. It is a protective measure. Drawing sweeping conclusions about someone’s gender identity from an online username is a mistake, and I will not be doing it here.

And as I’ve previously said, until we start treating Columbiner obsessions as the mental health crisis it is rather than a law enforcement problem waiting to happen, we are not preventing anything. We are just getting lucky.

(Sources)