Army Soldier Held In Double Killing Plotted Michigan School Shooting: Report

HOLLAND, MI — A soldier from Michigan accused of killing his wife and a New York trooper Sunday made a “die or dead list” years earlier while he was a middle school student in western Michigan, according to media accounts at the time. U.S. Army Sgt. Justin Walters, 32, is charged with two counts of murder in the shooting at his residence in upstate New York near the Canadian border.

Nichole Walters, 27, and New York State Trooper Joel Davis, 36, were killed, and a second woman at the residence was injured but is expected to survive, police said.

The trooper was fatally shot while responding to gunfire at the Walters residence about 8 p.m. Sunday, the Associated Press reported. He died about an hour later at a nearby hospital. Nichole Walters sustained multiple gunshot wounds, police said. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Grand Rapids Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

As a 15-year-old ninth-grader at Macatawa Bay Middle School in Holland, the Zeeland, Michigan, native allegedly hatched a plot to kill classmates, the Grand Rapids Press reported, citing police and its own newspaper reports at the time. Authorities were tipped off, and Davis pleaded guilty in family court to a reduced charge of conspiracy to carry a dangerous weapon, the newspaper said.

Davis and his alleged conspirator tried to get a gun from a suspected gang member as part of a plan “to come into the school cafeteria and shoot people, and then shoot themselves,” according to a police report at the time. The November 1999 “die list” targeted minorities and homosexuals, according to the Grand Rapids Press story.

A year later, Davis pleaded guilty to charges filed in the vandalism of more than 100 tombstones at a Holland cemetery, the newspaper said.

Davis, who joined the Army in 2007, has completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan and has received multiple commendations, the Army said. He is stationed at Fort Drum, New York.

Walters surrendered to authorities after the Sunday night shootings. He was arraigned Monday and ordered held without bail in the Jefferson County, New York, jail.

Photo: New York State Police via AP