Trinity Morley received 17 months in prison and a 10-year no-contact order after pleading guilty to attempted first-degree assault.

MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. — A Washington woman whose parents alerted police after discovering writings describing a plan to kill her former boyfriend has been sentenced to 17 months in prison, closing the central criminal case more than a year after deputies found her armed near the man’s Maple Valley home.

Trinity Morley, now 20, pleaded guilty in August to attempted first-degree assault with a domestic violence designation, according to reporting based on King County court records. She was sentenced Sept. 25 to 17 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release. The court also ordered her to have no contact with her former boyfriend for 10 years. The plea represented a reduction from the attempted first-degree murder charge she faced after her July 27, 2025, arrest.

The sentence resolves a case that began inside Morley’s family home, where her parents became increasingly alarmed by her behavior and her interest in obtaining a firearm. Court documents reviewed by news organizations said the parents had concerns about Morley’s mental health and had previously sought help for her. About a week before the confrontation in Maple Valley, they obtained an extreme risk protection order, a court action that prosecutors said helped prevent Morley from completing a shotgun purchase she had already attempted.

On the night of July 27, Morley told her parents she was leaving to graffiti houses, according to prosecutors. After she left, her parents searched her room because they were worried about what she might do. They found a journal entry that prosecutors said laid out an intent to go to her ex-boyfriend’s home with a shotgun. The writing referred to having the gun and ammunition and indicated that Morley was prepared to use other weapons if necessary. Her parents believed the danger was immediate and called 911.

Morley’s father also used location information from her phone, which indicated she was at or near the former boyfriend’s home, according to court documents. At nearly the same time, another emergency call came from that house. The former boyfriend’s father told authorities he had seen a masked person dressed in dark clothing outside the residence carrying a firearm. Security video later released by investigators showed a hooded, partially concealed figure with a shotgun approaching the property. Authorities identified that person as Morley.

The former boyfriend was not at the house, local reporting said, but other family members were inside. His father told investigators that he moved his family upstairs after seeing the armed person on the home’s security system. The masked figure eventually moved away from the residence as deputies converged on the area. The two separate 911 calls — one from Morley’s family and one from the family at the targeted home — gave law enforcement information about both the suspected plan and the armed person’s location.

Deputies used a drone during the search and located Morley at a nearby dock, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office account cited by Court TV. She still had a shotgun and a knife when deputies reached her. Authorities said Morley told officers she was suicidal during the encounter. A deputy approached gradually and spoke with her until she put down the weapons. She was taken into custody without anyone being shot or otherwise physically injured in the confrontation.

Prosecutors later said Morley acknowledged after receiving her rights that she had intended to kill her former boyfriend and then die herself. The charging case also relied on the journal found by her parents, the firearm and knife recovered at the dock, security footage from the former boyfriend’s home and statements gathered after the arrest. Prosecutors described her conduct after being detained as unusually casual, citing video in which she smiled, rolled her eyes and commented on an officer’s written account. Those observations were part of the prosecution’s description of the case but were not necessary to establish the later guilty plea.

The route by which Morley obtained the shotgun also became an important part of the investigation. Prosecutors said she had tried to buy a shotgun herself, but the transaction was not completed because of the state’s waiting process and the extreme risk protection order sought by her parents. She later obtained a shotgun from the man she was dating at the time. According to court filings summarized by Law&Crime and FOX 13 Seattle, Morley told him that she was receiving threatening messages and needed the weapon for protection. Prosecutors said writings recovered after her arrest indicated that explanation was false.

Morley told investigators that her anger toward her former boyfriend followed a sexual assault allegation she had made against him months earlier. Authorities did not file charges against the former boyfriend. Prosecutors said detectives investigated that report and closed the case after determining the allegation was unfounded. The former boyfriend has not been publicly identified in the reporting reviewed for this story. The fact that no charge resulted from Morley’s allegation does not itself establish what occurred between the two; the available public accounts document only the investigators’ decision and the prosecution’s description of it.

The criminal case changed substantially between Morley’s arrest and sentencing. When she was arrested at 19, prosecutors charged her with attempted first-degree murder and she was held on $500,000 bail. Early court proceedings focused on the armed approach to the home, the journal and the statements attributed to Morley after her arrest. By August 2026, however, she had entered a guilty plea to attempted first-degree assault with a domestic violence designation. Public reporting on the sentencing does not provide a detailed explanation of the plea negotiations or identify every consideration that led prosecutors to accept the reduced offense.

The guilty plea also altered how the underlying conduct can be described. At the time of arrest, prosecutors alleged that Morley intended to commit murder, and news reports properly treated that accusation as unproven. With her later plea, the case no longer rests only on an allegation that she committed a crime. She admitted guilt to attempted first-degree assault, while the more serious attempted murder charge that framed the initial prosecution did not become the offense of conviction. The distinction is important because the sentence stems from the charge to which she actually pleaded guilty.

The case also shows how several interventions converged before anyone was physically harmed. Morley’s parents had acted before July 27 by seeking an extreme risk protection order after becoming concerned about her effort to obtain a gun. They acted again when they found the journal and called police. At the former boyfriend’s home, his father separately saw the armed figure through a security system and called 911. Deputies then located Morley away from the house and persuaded her to surrender. Each of those events is documented in the public accounts of the case; what might have happened without them cannot be known.

More than a year after the nighttime arrest, the sentencing establishes the immediate legal outcome. Morley must serve the 17-month prison term imposed by the court, followed by 36 months of supervision under the sentence reported in September. The 10-year no-contact order places a longer restriction on any interaction with her former boyfriend. No later criminal proceeding in the case was identified in the sources reviewed for this report.

Author note: Last updated November 10, 2026.