Prosecutors said Lilyana Rose Wagner abandoned a contemplated attack on her former middle school before killing her mother in 2024.

TIFTON, Ga. — A Georgia teenager who was 14 when she fatally shot her mother has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to felony murder and aggravated assault, closing a case in which prosecutors said investigators uncovered an intense interest in school shootings, online contacts encouraging violence and a handwritten admission describing the killing as a last-minute change of target.

Lilyana Rose Wagner, now 16, must serve at least 30 years before she can become eligible for parole, according to Tifton Judicial Circuit District Attorney Patrick Warren. Her mother, 51-year-old Rachel Suzanne Wagner, was found dead in her Tifton home on Nov. 19, 2024. Authorities said she had been shot once while in bed. The guilty plea meant prosecutors did not have to take the case to trial, and the sentence established the first possible point at which Wagner may be considered for parole. Eligibility after 30 years does not mean release is guaranteed.

The case reached its legal conclusion nearly two years after a vehicle crash unexpectedly led authorities back to the Wagner home. On the day Rachel Wagner was found, Lilyana Wagner was involved in a crash in Crawford County and was the only person in the vehicle, prosecutors and local news reports said. She told officers that she lived with her mother. Authorities then learned Rachel Wagner had not reported to work that morning and could not be reached by phone. Crawford County officials contacted police in Tifton, where officers were asked to conduct a welfare check at the family’s East 18th Street residence.

Officers who entered the home found Rachel Wagner dead in her bed. Investigators determined that she had suffered a single fatal gunshot wound to the back of the head. The discovery turned what had begun with a traffic crash into a homicide investigation involving the Tifton Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Investigators spent months examining evidence, including information recovered from Lilyana Wagner’s phone. Prosecutors later said that digital material became a central part of understanding events before and after the killing because it documented her communications with people she knew only through online platforms.

According to the district attorney’s account, investigators found that Wagner had developed a strong interest in school shooters and mass-casualty attacks. Authorities said she had communicated through multiple apps with anonymous people who encouraged her to carry out violence. Prosecutors also said those communications continued after her mother’s death, including after Wagner was taken to a hospital following the crash. Warren described the exchanges as evidence that outside online influences had reinforced Wagner’s violent thinking. Authorities have not publicly identified the anonymous users or announced criminal charges against them in connection with Rachel Wagner’s death.

A handwritten confession provided investigators with Wagner’s own account of a choice she said preceded the killing. In the document, she wrote that she had considered attacking her former middle school but changed course and killed her mother instead. She described the decision as a “last-minute choice” and said the violence had been influenced by perpetrators of earlier mass shootings. Authorities said she listed several attackers in the document. News organizations have reported the existence of that list, but repeating the names is not necessary to explain the criminal case or the sentence imposed on Wagner.

Prosecutors said investigators also examined Wagner’s diary as they tried to determine why the killing occurred. Warren told WALB that the inquiry considered several possible explanations, including whether Wagner was experiencing a mental health crisis, whether she feared her mother, whether abuse or self-defense played a role, and what other circumstances might have preceded the shooting. The district attorney said the evidence did not support explanations that would justify the killing. His office instead pointed to Wagner’s writings, digital communications and conduct as evidence of deliberate violence. The precise mix of factors that shaped her behavior cannot be reduced to one piece of evidence, and authorities have not released the complete investigative file.

One detail prosecutors emphasized was Wagner’s access to the firearm. Warren said Rachel Wagner had legally purchased the gun at a Valdosta pawnshop about a month before her death and had allowed her daughter to keep the firearm and ammunition in her bedroom. That fact became part of the prosecutor’s public discussion of the case after sentencing, alongside the online communications and Wagner’s writings. Authorities have not suggested that Rachel Wagner knew her daughter was contemplating an attack on a school or planned to use the weapon against her. The public accounts instead describe the gun as legally acquired before it was used in the homicide.

The district attorney also said investigators found evidence that Wagner’s fascination with mass violence extended beyond casual reading. The prosecution described an online identity and communications focused on school shootings and other attacks, while Wagner’s handwritten statement tied her own conduct to that interest. Warren said the evidence persuaded investigators that Wagner understood the nature of what she had done. His description came after the guilty plea, meaning a jury was not asked to weigh competing prosecution and defense evidence at a trial. The plea itself resolved Wagner’s criminal liability for felony murder and aggravated assault.

Rachel Wagner was originally from New Zealand and had lived in the United States for almost 30 years, according to relatives quoted in reporting after her death. A sister-in-law told the New Zealand outlet Stuff that Lilyana Wagner was being homeschooled and spent substantial time gaming while her mother worked. Those observations provide family background but do not establish that gaming caused the homicide, and prosecutors did not present video games as a singular explanation for the crime. The more specific evidence highlighted by authorities centered on Wagner’s writings, her interest in mass shootings, her online communications and her access to the firearm.

The sentence also marks a sharp transition from the age at which the crime occurred to the length of the punishment now imposed. Wagner was 14 at the time of her mother’s death and 16 when she entered her guilty plea. Under the sentence announced by Warren, she faces decades in custody before parole can first be considered. The district attorney described the outcome in stark terms, saying the case produced “no winners” because Rachel Wagner is dead and her daughter is now serving a life sentence. His office thanked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Tifton Police Department and investigators who worked on the case.

Warren used the sentencing announcement to focus publicly on the role of online influence, urging parents to pay attention to whom children communicate with and what ideas they encounter. That warning was his interpretation of lessons from the investigation rather than a finding that online contacts alone caused the killing. The available evidence described by authorities points to several concrete parts of the case: Wagner’s own writings, a contemplated school attack, anonymous communications encouraging violence, access to a firearm and the fatal shooting of her mother. Investigators have not publicly identified a single cause that by itself explains why those circumstances culminated in homicide.

Currently, no later publicly reported court development has displaced the guilty plea or sentence announced in August. Wagner remains sentenced to life in prison and must serve at least 30 years before she becomes eligible for parole. Public reporting has not identified charges against the anonymous online contacts described by investigators, leaving their identities and any further investigative action unclear. The criminal case against Wagner, however, has moved from investigation and prosecution to the service of her sentence.

Author note: Last updated September 30, 2026.