A Columbia County judge on Friday found the state had failed to show that a 14-year-old accused of plotting a mass shooting at a Washington mall had taken any “substantial step” toward carrying out the plan.
But Circuit Judge Nickolas Brajcich refused to release Beau M. Carr from custody, saying he was not convinced the teen could be safely returned to his parents’ home yet.
Brajcich set another detention hearing for next week.
His ruling came after an FBI agent, called by the state as a witness, refused to answer a defense lawyer’s questions about an undercover FBI employee’s private chats with the teen.
Carr went by the profile “Zodiac99” on an encrypted Signal channel before his May 22 arrest, according to FBI agent Ariel Snyder. He’s accused of sharing plans on the extremist “764” online network to set off explosives and shoot people at the Three Rivers Valley mall in Kelso and then die by suicide.
Snyder said Carr shared a map that showed his intended path through the mall, with black Xs denoting bombs and red Xs for shooting targets of moviegoers exiting the mall’s theater.
Under cross-examination, Snyder testified that an FBI employee communicated with Carr in a private Signal chat aside from the group chat where the teen had shared his alleged plot. But she refused to say how many times the two chatted or describe what they discussed.
She acknowledged that the FBI employee chatted with Carr about the hand drawn map but declined to say if that occurred before or after the teen allegedly shared the map in the group chat.
“I’m not entitled to answer that,” Snyder said, citing a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that she said restricted her from testifying about “law enforcement-sensitive” information.
She later handed the letter, signed by Oregon’s Acting U.S. Attorney William Narus, to the court clerk and judge to review.
Defense lawyer Chris Heywood objected, saying he had a right to confront the evidence against Carr.
It’s unacceptable that the U.S. Attorney’s Office “picks and chooses” what an FBI agent gets to testify about while a 14-year-old sits in custody for nearly a month, Heywood said.
“A unilateral government authority is going to cherry pick what you can talk about. That’s unacceptable,” he said.
Heywood demanded that all of Snyder’s testimony be stricken from the record. He also accused the state prosecutor of “not playing open and fair,” noting that Deputy District Attorney Cody Coughlin learned of the U.S. attorney’s letter two-and-a-half hours before the hearing but never informed the defense.
After a break in the hearing, the judge ruled he would allow Snyder’s testimony about Carr’s communications in the group Signal chat but not consider any of her testimony about the private chat between Carr and the undercover FBI employee.
Heywood continued to object, arguing that one chat can’t be “severed from” the other because it doesn’t allow him to probe the undercover employee’s relationship with Carr in the private chat.
Heywood then continued to question Snyder, asking if the 14-year-old made any comments in the group chat that weren’t included in a search warrant affidavit shared with the defense that could help the teen’s defense.
“The remaining portions of the chat are still undergoing declassification,’’ Snyder responded. She added, “I understand that’s frustrating.”
“I don’t know that you do,” Heywood said.
With that, Brajcich changed his mind from his ruling 20 minutes earlier and said he would not consider any of Snyder’s testimony about the group or private chats.
“Hearing there’s exculpatory information that can’t be discovered, I’m going to strike everything that’s from the chats,” Brajcich said. That also included two exhibits of a hand drawn map of the alleged mall plot, plus photos of a knife, gloves and boots that Snyder testified Carr had shared online.
While Brajcich said he recognizes the federal government needs to keep certain information confidential, “when that need butts up against a citizen’s constitutional rights, we have issues.”
What was left for Brajcich to consider was Snyder’s testimony about how the FBI first learned of the alleged threat, how the FBI tied it to Carr and what investigators found at the family home.
Snyder said the FBI “received information” on May 19 about a threat online that came from a person using the profile name “Zodiac99.”
A day later, the FBI identified Carr as using that profile on Signal and other social media and set up 24-hour surveillance at his family’s rural home on a dead-end street in Clatskanie.
On May 22, FBI agents and Columbia County Sheriff’s deputies raided the home with a search warrant and seized four knives, three guns and clothing, including the gloves and boots that Snyder said the teen planned to wear at the mall.
But under cross-examination, Snyder said one of the knives was found on a kitchen counter, another beside a microwave and two in the garage.
Two of the three guns were found unsecured in the parents’ bedroom. One of those was in a bag in a closet.
Carr’s mother Debra Carr testified that she took another handgun out of a safe the night before because she was concerned about strange cars driving by their home and that she put it under clothes in an armoire at the edge of the parents’ bed overnight.
Snyder and two other agents questioned Carr during a three-hour interview after the search of the home, she said.
They asked him why he chose the Kelso mall and he said it was a “generic location the group would buy as an attack location,” Snyder testified.
“He said he had no intention of following through on the attack,” she said.
Under cross-examination, Snyder also testified that the 14-year-old told the FBI multiple times that he never intended to carry out the alleged plot and he felt “trapped” in the group chat, concerned he or his family might be harmed if he left.
Snyder also testified that someone else in the online group chat had posted a “manifesto,” that was reported to have come from Carr, in which the writer described, “My life of tragedy,” pledged alliance with, “No lives matter,” and discussed misanthropy, a disgust of the human species, revenge and religious ideologies.
While Carr admitted in his interview with the FBI that he had written a manifesto, he never identified the one that was shared online as the one he wrote, his lawyer argued.
Snyder also testified that investigators had pinged Carr’s cellphone, suggesting he had been at the Kelso mall on May 15, when she said he shared in the group Signal chat, “wouldn’t it be funny if he just started stabbing people,” at the mall but later said, “it was a joke.” The FBI also found through surveillance that the teen was in a car in the mall parking lot on May 21, she said.
Carr’s mother Debra Carr, called by the defense lawyer, testified that she and her son went to a Safeway across from the mall on May 15 and she let her son walk across to the mall to buy a T-shirt. She picked him up about 15 minutes later, she said.
On May 21, the two were back at that Safeway by the mall, and he never left her sight, she said.
Heywood had earlier asked Snyder: “Is it uncommon for a child on the Internet to make grandiose statements?”
“It’s not uncommon,” she said.
“This is fantastical,” Heywood told the judge. “You have a 14-year-old who talks about a plan and disabuses it.”
Coughlin, the prosecutor, argued that the teen could access the parents’ guns because their bedroom wasn’t locked and that the teen’s plan, as Snyder testified, was “incredibly detailed, highly articulable and very concerning.”
He urged the judge to keep Carr in custody.
Brajcich said he found no evidence that any of the guns or knives were in the teens’ room or that he had accessed them.
While he said it appears the teen came up with a mass shooting plan, he found no clear and convincing evidence so far that Carr took steps to try to kill anyone.
“What I learned today does not meet the standard,” Brajcich said.
But the judge said he was reluctant to release Carr to his family with home detention or GPS monitoring, as his lawyer sought.
He said he wasn’t convinced that the public or Carr would be safe at home, noting that the 14-year-old was said to have found a way around the parental controls placed on his electronic devices by quickly flipping on and off the VPN, a virtual private network.
“Despite those controls, those predators on the internet still got to him,” the judge said.
Turning to the teen, Brajcich added, “I don’t feel comfortable with a safe release plan for you yet.”
The next hearing is set for Wednesday.
Carr, wearing black basketball shorts and a black hooded-sweatshirt, arrived in court with a belly chain, his wrists handcuffed and his ankles shackled. His attorney successfully convinced Brajcich to unshackle the teen at the start of the more than 3-hour hearing, over the state’s objection.
The prosecutor said Carr’s alleged affiliation with domestic “terrorist groups,” was the basis for the restraints. Coughlin also said Carr had attempted to restrict his own breathing while in custody, leading to a hospital visit, and tried to access a book on school shootings.
Carr is being held at the Cowlitz County juvenile detention center in Longview, Washington, on allegations of attempted second-degree murder, attempted assault, two counts of unlawful possession of firearms, disorderly conduct, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon and tampering with physical evidence. His lawyer has entered not guilty pleas on his behalf to all the charges.
Coughlin had asked the judge to close Friday’s court hearing to the press but the judge denied his motion.
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