The 20-year-old was sentenced for attempted first-degree assault after originally facing an attempted murder charge tied to a 2025 confrontation.
MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. — A criminal case that began with an attempted first-degree murder charge against a teenager accused of approaching her ex-boyfriend’s home with a shotgun ended on a different offense, with Trinity Morley pleading guilty to attempted first-degree assault and receiving 17 months in prison.
The distinction between the original charge and the conviction is central to the case’s final outcome. Morley, now 20, entered the assault plea with a domestic violence designation in August 2026. She was sentenced Sept. 25 to 17 months in prison, followed by 36 months of supervised release, and was ordered to have no contact with her former boyfriend for 10 years. The public reporting reviewed for this article does not set out the full negotiations that produced the plea or explain why prosecutors moved away from the attempted murder charge filed after her arrest.
The original prosecution was built around a series of events on July 27, 2025, and evidence collected before, during and after Morley’s arrest. Prosecutors said her parents discovered a journal after she left their home that night. They had already been concerned about her efforts to obtain a shotgun and had secured an extreme risk protection order roughly a week earlier. The journal, as described in court reporting, went further than generalized anger: it referred to a firearm, ammunition and a plan directed at Morley’s former boyfriend.
That written material gave police a potential statement of intent before they encountered Morley. Her parents called 911 after reading it, and her father used phone-location information that indicated she was near her ex-boyfriend’s residence. Prosecutors said Morley had told her parents she was going out to graffiti houses. The account they found in the journal led them to believe she had left for a far more dangerous purpose.
A second piece of evidence emerged independently at the Maple Valley residence. The former boyfriend’s father saw a masked person outside carrying a firearm and contacted 911, according to court documents and local reporting. Security images showed a hooded figure near the house with a shotgun. The father told investigators that he gathered family members upstairs because he feared the armed person could enter. Morley’s former boyfriend was not at the residence at the time.
The surveillance evidence did more than place an armed figure at the location. It connected the emergency described by Morley’s parents with an event unfolding at the intended target’s home. Authorities later identified the figure in the footage as Morley. She left the property before deputies detained her, but officers and sheriff’s personnel continued searching the surrounding area.
Using a drone, deputies located Morley on a nearby dock, according to the sheriff’s account reported by Court TV. She had a shotgun and a knife. Authorities said Morley told deputies she was suicidal and at one point held the gun against herself. Rather than rush her, a deputy spoke with her from a distance and gradually approached. Morley eventually put down the weapons and surrendered. No one was physically injured in the encounter.
Prosecutors said Morley then made statements that strengthened their allegation about her intent. After she was advised of her rights, she acknowledged planning to kill her former boyfriend and then die herself, according to court documents summarized by several outlets. That alleged admission joined the journal, the security footage and the weapons as the core evidence cited in the initial attempted murder prosecution. Prosecutors also pointed to her conduct in custody, saying video showed her smiling and commenting casually while officers completed paperwork.
Another evidentiary thread concerned how the shotgun reached Morley. She had tried to purchase one herself, prosecutors said, but could not immediately complete the transaction. The state’s waiting process delayed the purchase, and an extreme risk protection order sought by her parents prevented the sale from being finalized. The gun she ultimately carried to the Maple Valley neighborhood came from the man she was dating at the time, according to prosecutors.
The state said Morley obtained that weapon by telling her then-boyfriend that she had received threatening messages and needed a shotgun for protection. Prosecutors said writings found during the investigation included an apology in which she acknowledged lying to him. The available public reporting does not suggest that he knew she planned to take the gun to her former boyfriend’s home, and the sources reviewed do not report charges against him.
The prosecution also attributed a possible motive to Morley’s anger over an earlier sexual assault report. Morley told investigators her ex-boyfriend had sexually assaulted her and that she was upset no charges resulted. Prosecutors said detectives investigated the allegation she made in May 2025 and ultimately closed that case as unfounded. Because only summaries of that earlier investigation are available in the reporting reviewed here, the precise evidence detectives considered has not been independently established in these public accounts.
Those facts framed the case when Morley first appeared in court as a 19-year-old defendant charged with attempted first-degree murder. She was held on $500,000 bail, and early coverage focused on whether the journal, her alleged statements and the armed appearance at the home showed a deliberate effort to commit homicide. At that stage, the attempted murder accusation remained a charge, not a finding of guilt. Morley was entitled to the presumption of innocence unless and until the case was resolved.
The August 2026 plea changed that procedural posture. By admitting guilt to attempted first-degree assault, Morley accepted criminal responsibility for a different offense than the one that dominated the early reporting. The sentencing that followed therefore cannot accurately be described as punishment for an attempted murder conviction. Her conviction is for attempted first-degree assault with the domestic violence designation reported in the court case. The attempted murder charge is relevant history because it explains the prosecution’s original position, but it is not the offense for which the 17-month sentence was imposed.
The change also narrows what can be stated with certainty about the legal resolution. Public reports establish the guilty plea, prison term, period of supervision and 10-year no-contact order. They do not provide a transcript of the plea hearing, a detailed sentencing memorandum or a complete account of the arguments made by prosecutors and the defense before the sentence was entered. Without those records, it would be speculative to assign a specific reason for the final charge or say precisely which factor determined the 17-month term.
What is clear is that the sentencing occurred after a case containing several different categories of evidence: private writings discovered before police arrived, two families’ emergency calls, digital location information, residential surveillance video, weapons recovered from Morley, law enforcement video and statements attributed to her after arrest. The case never proceeded to a trial in which a jury would have been asked to weigh those items against a defense. The guilty plea removed the need for such a verdict.
The final orders now govern Morley’s legal status. She faces the 17-month prison sentence and 36 months of supervised release reported after the September hearing. Separate from that supervision period, the no-contact order requires her to stay away from her former boyfriend for 10 years. No subsequent development altering that conviction or sentence was identified in the sources reviewed through Nov. 10.
Author note: Last updated November 10, 2026.