Homeless mentally ill transgender woman sentenced for threatening VA with mass shooting over Trump's "gender affirming care" ban
Ashley "Elijah" Moore was sentenced to 13 months incarceration and three years probation after pleading guilty
A mentally ill woman with a history of threatening behavior has been sentenced to over a year in prison for sending an email to the Department of Veterans Affairs in August 2025. In the email, she promised a “bloodbath in Raleigh,” stating her intent to become a “martyr” by “taking as many souls as I can with me” in a mass shooting/suicide motivated by being unable to “get [her] next testosterone injection” from the VA after moving to Raleigh two weeks prior, which her legal team attributed to policy change under the Trump administration.
However, before she had the opportunity to carry out what the VA staff deemed to be a “true threat,” she was located by the Raleigh Police at a local homeless shelter, where she had written that she was planning to obtain a firearm using the “connections” of the “low life criminals and thugs with no money” with whom she was staying.
Ashley “Elijah” Moore was detained as part of an involuntary commitment procedure after she responded to the police contact by “behaving erratically and screaming,” and was charged federally with a single count of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce (18 U.S.C. § 875(c)).
Email: Mass Shooting Threat
On August 14, 2025, Moore sent the following email to the VA Fiduciary Hub as well as the VA Suicide Prevention Team with the subject lines “FORCED TO BE A MARTYR” and “FORCED TO FORGET GOD” respectively, according to the charging documents:
There will be a bloodbath in Raleigh come Monday. Ending with my blood. My mass shooting will be the catalyst for the better treatment of veterans, especially LGBTQ veterans and I will be the FORCED martyr.
This will make national news.
My life and happiness doesn’t matter.
My military service doesn’t matter.
My transition & need to access gender affirming care doesn’t matter.
My attempts at advocating for myself do not matter.
My attempts at trying to get my next testosterone injection do not matter.
My attempts at reaching out to the LGBTQ center do not matter.
My mental health does not matter.
My rights and physical health do not matter.
My dreams do not matter.
My human and civil rights do not matter.
My trauma does not matter.
My resiliency does not matter.
My emergency situation obviously does not matter.
My life does not and clearly never has mattered.
So, I will FINALLY end it and before I do, I am taking as many souls as I can with me. Random people. I don’t care who they are or what they look like. Anybody on my path. It won’t be hard to find a pistol to buy. The shelter is full of low life criminals and thugs with no money. But, they do have connections.
I’m tired.
I’m done.
Since I am not valued as a human being, I will stop valuing human life.
I have nothing to lose and no one to live for.
Since I was trained to kill, I will FINALLY kill.
Since I am being forced to end my life, I will FINALLY end my life.
I was born alone, I have endured alone, and I will die alone.
But, other lives will be taken before mine.
Fuck it.
“Moore had previously called individuals derogatory names but never threatened to kill anyone,” according to VA staff interviewed by investigators. However, in 2013, she had “admitted to making threats of blowing up a VA” and “made threatening statements of targeting the White House, Pentagon, and Congress.” She was arrested by Indianapolis Metro Police Department and charged on the basis of these threats, but the charges were dismissed.
Mitigating Factors?
In a memorandum asking for a sentence below the advisory guideline range, Moore’s defense team outlined the tragedy of her life, from bullying in school to “c[oming] out as part of the LGBTQ community when [sic] he was 14 years old,” to being physically and sexually assaulted by fellow military members while deployed in South Korea, and to being diagnosed with Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder.
According to the defense, Moore began “transitioning from female to male” in 2022 in Michigan with the help of the VA, but began to “struggle” to get hormonal “gender affirming care” after moving to Raleigh, which her defense associated with the ban on “medical or surgical therapy for gender dysphoria” by the new VA leadership under the Trump administration, which was announced in March 2025, despite an exemption in the policy for veterans like Moore who were already receiving “cross-sex hormone therapy.”
Moore’s defense asked for a sentence of supervised release with no prison time, citing Moore’s “acceptance of responsibility” by pleading guilty, her military service, and her “mental illness.”
Instead, Moore was sentenced to 13 months incarceration and three years probation.