U.S. woman sentenced to life in Valentine’s Day shooting plot
HALIFAX — She sat motionless in the wood-panelled, windowless courtroom as the judge delivered the sentence: life in prison with no chance of parole for a decade.
Lindsay Souvannarath was then led away by sheriffs, returned to the jail cells that have been her home since 2015.
It’s been three years since the Chicago-area woman was arrested at the Halifax airport with a “death suit” and books on serial killers in her luggage.
She was planning a Valentine’s Day shooting rampage, a plot concocted online with a Halifax teen that would have seen them open fire at the Halifax Shopping Centre food court on a busy Saturday in February 2015.
The 26-year-old American pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder only after thousands of damning Facebook messages between the conspirators were deemed admissible as evidence in the case.
Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Peter Rosinski told the court Friday that Souvannarath continues to pose a threat to public safety.
The judge said she has not expressed remorse for her murderous plot, nor has she renounced her ideological motivations for the conspiracy.
In his decision, he called her prospects for rehabilitation “very questionable” and said she needs to be separated from society until safety concerns can be addressed.
Rosinski was satisfied that had the plot not been interrupted by an anonymous tip and the quick actions of local police, the plan would have been carried out.
“Coming upon unsuspecting members of the public at the mall that day, what carnage would they have inflicted with a 16gauge shotgun with 23 shells; a .308 calibre lever-action rifle with 13 shells; and a knife to finish off the wounded?”
The judge added: “Ms. Souvannarath’s intention was to kill more than the 13 people who suffered that fate at the Columbine High School shooting,” he wrote, referring to her obsession with the massacre in Littleton, Colo. Her co-conspirator, 19-yearold James Gamble, killed himself as police surrounded his Halifaxarea home.
Kate Battan, the lead investigator of the 1999 shooting who wrote a report highlighting parallels between the school shooting and the mall plot, called it “ironic” that Friday’s sentencing took place on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. She spent a month combing through the private online messages between Souvannarath and Gamble and their plans to attack a Halifax mall.
“My impression is that they were all in and this was not a joke,” she said in an interview.
The judge shared that view, telling the court the “plan had been set in motion” once Souvannarath boarded a plane for Halifax.
The spectre of shooters opening fire in a busy mall threatened thousands of shoppers and workers and unsettled the city for months. Rosinski cited the explicit intention to create mass panic and undermine the community’s sense of security as an aggravating factor in the sentencing.
“They intended to maximize dead and wounded casualties,” the judge wrote in his 32-page decision.
Crown attorney Mark Heerema said the sentence serves as a deterrent for similar crimes.
The woman from Geneva, a quiet suburb of Chicago, must provide a sample of her DNA and will be subject to a firearms prohibition for 10 years after her release from prison.
He gave her credit for three years served in custody, so she will be eligible for parole in seven years. The judge has recommended intensive psychological and psychiatric counselling and treatment.