The teenager who admitted to plotting a deadly attack at Mountain Vista High School was sentenced to three years in the Department of Youth Corrections on Wednesday.
Brooke Higgins, 17, was given credit for the 411 days she already spent in custody on the felony charge of solicitation of first-degree murder.
During sentencing, Higgins said she regrets making anyone feel unsafe after writing in a journal in 2015 that she wanted to "shoot many people".
"I don’t know how to explain it to anyone else because I don’t know how to explain it to myself," Higgins said.
Her apology went beyond the courtroom.
"I'm sorry to my school, teachers, students and parents no matter how extreme the threat may be no one should be scared to go to school," she said.
In court, prosecutors read a Snapchat conversation with Sienna Johnson, Higgins alleged accomplice in this case.
"We have to get guns, get good at shooting them, plan out how we will get the most people. Then do it. Let's become best friends. Columbine part 2," George Brauchler recited, the 18th Judicial District Attorney.
Chilling details in the plot to attack Mountain Vista High School by Higgins and Johnson, were released last month.
Court documents indicate that Higgins wrote in her journal that she wanted to “shoot people around her before killing herself” in the attack, which was plotted for Dec. 17. 2015 – the last day of classes before the holiday break at the Highlands Ranch High School.
Higgins also wrote that “a day did not go by that she did not think about killing herself or the people around her” and that “she wished she had done Columbine” with the two seniors who murdered a dozen students and a teacher at that Jefferson County school on April 20, 1999.
“Everything” in a journal kept by one of the Columbine killers “made sense to her,” according to the affidavit.
Judge Paul King with Douglas County Court Division One took into account Higgins' troubled home life, but did not take the weight off her actions.
"Every parent has to say 'Is my child going to be protected from being murdered by a fellow student at that school?' King asked. "And that's not a joke. We in Colorado know that all too well."
According to the documents, the plot came to light after someone using a system known as Text-A-Tip alerted authorities to the plans. On Dec. 9, 2015, Johnson was taken to Children’s Hospital Colorado and placed on a mental health hold. A few days later, according to the affidavit, Johnson’s mother called authorities after discovering journals in two spiral notebooks that detailed the planned attack at Mountain Vista, a school of roughly 2,200 students.
A psychiatric nurse at the hospital later told authorities that Johnson told her she and Higgins went online in an effort to buy guns and that “there was a pact between the two girls to carry out the shooting no matter if one side was unavailable to participate,” according to the affidavit.
Johnson also told the nurse that “her plan was to kill her mother and sister prior to committing the shooting at the school” and that the two girls planned to kill themselves after attacking Mountain Vista.
Authorities then went to Higgins’ home, where they discovered a purple journal that detailed the plan.
Although the girls initially planned the attack for Dec. 17, 2015, they later moved the plan to January of 2016 because they had been unable to get their hands on guns.
Johnson, in the meantime, told a detective that she thought the Columbine killers were “gods” and had begun practicing with a BB gun “in order to get used to holding a gun and the feeling of a gun,” according to the affidavit.
Defense attorneys had portrayed the allegations against the girls as the equivalent of “thought” crimes. But it was clear in various court proceedings that prosecutors viewed the plot as much more serious, and the affidavit shows in one case multiple parallels to Columbine.
It is not clear whether Johnson’s attorneys and prosecutors are discussing a plea like the one Higgins took.
Johnson remains in custody on $1 million bail. She is scheduled to be in court again Feb. 27.
Once Higgins' sentence is completed, she is expected to begin what is known as a deferred judgment on the second felony charge, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. That sentence would require her to stay out of trouble for four years – if she does, that conviction could be wiped off her record. If she doesn’t, she could be sentenced to prison.
