One family had found a threatening journal; another was watching a masked, armed figure outside its home as deputies were dispatched.
MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. — Two families were calling 911 on the same July night for different views of the same unfolding emergency: one had discovered writings describing a planned attack, while the other was watching an armed, masked figure outside a home. More than a year later, Trinity Morley has been sentenced to 17 months in prison.
Morley, now 20, pleaded guilty in August 2026 to attempted first-degree assault with a domestic violence designation. A judge sentenced her Sept. 25 to the prison term and 36 months of supervised release and ordered her not to contact her former boyfriend for 10 years. She had originally been charged with attempted first-degree murder after her July 27, 2025, arrest, but that was not the offense that ultimately produced her conviction.
The simultaneous emergency calls are the point at which separate streams of information met. At Morley’s family home, her parents had searched her room after she went out that evening. Prosecutors said they were already alarmed by her effort to obtain a shotgun and by other behavior that led them to seek an extreme risk protection order. When they found her journal, they believed the danger had moved from a concern about what she might do to a plan that could already be underway.
The journal described possession of a shotgun and ammunition and referred to going after Morley’s ex-boyfriend, according to court documents quoted in news reports. Her parents called police and provided the information they had. Her father then checked her phone location and saw that it placed her near the former boyfriend’s Maple Valley residence. Morley had reportedly told her parents she was leaving to graffiti houses, making the location information more alarming in light of what they had just read.
At the residence itself, the former boyfriend’s father did not know what Morley’s parents had found. He had his own evidence: a home security camera showed a person outside in dark clothing with a face covering and a gun. He called 911 and told authorities an armed woman was in the backyard area, according to court documents. Local reporting said he brought other members of the household upstairs because he feared the person might enter.
The former boyfriend was away from the house, but his family did not know the full purpose of the person outside. Investigators later identified the masked figure as Morley. Security video showed the armed person near the residence and looking toward the camera. Those images became one of several pieces of evidence that prosecutors relied on when they accused Morley of arriving at the property with a plan to attack her ex-boyfriend.
By then, deputies responding to the parents’ warning had information suggesting that the person at the house could be armed and that her former boyfriend might be the intended target. The second 911 call confirmed that someone matching that danger was physically present outside the residence. The two accounts did not arise from witnesses standing together or sharing information beforehand. They came from separate families experiencing opposite sides of the same event.
Morley left the property before deputies took her into custody. Law enforcement searched the area, and a sheriff’s drone located her at a nearby dock, according to an account from the King County Sheriff’s Office reported by Court TV. Deputies said she still had a shotgun and a knife. The response then shifted from protecting the residence to ending an armed encounter without anyone being shot.
Authorities said Morley described herself as suicidal during the standoff and at one point held the firearm against herself. A deputy slowly approached and spoke with her. The encounter ended with Morley putting down the shotgun and knife and surrendering. No member of the former boyfriend’s family was physically injured, and the deputies were also able to take Morley into custody without gunfire.
The weapons recovered at the dock were not the first time a shotgun had entered the family’s concerns. Prosecutors said Morley had earlier tried to purchase one. A waiting period delayed that transaction, and the extreme risk protection order obtained by her parents stopped the purchase from being completed. That did not leave her without access to a firearm, however. Prosecutors said she obtained another shotgun from the man she was then dating.
According to the prosecution account, Morley told that boyfriend she was receiving threatening messages and needed the gun for personal protection. Investigators later found writings in which she apologized for deceiving him, prosecutors said. The public reporting reviewed for this story does not state that the boyfriend who provided the shotgun knew she intended to take it to her ex-boyfriend’s home. It also does not report that he was charged in connection with Morley’s conduct.
After her arrest, prosecutors said Morley acknowledged a plan to kill her former boyfriend and then die herself. Investigators also connected the events to an earlier allegation Morley had made against him. She told authorities that he had sexually assaulted her and that she was angry the allegation had not resulted in a prosecution. Prosecutors said police had investigated the May 2025 report and closed it as unfounded, with no criminal charge filed against the former boyfriend.
That earlier allegation requires careful distinction from the offense Morley later admitted. Public reports establish that she made the accusation and that investigators did not bring a case based on it. The reviewed sources do not contain the complete investigative record from that complaint, and the former boyfriend has remained unidentified in the news coverage. The later prosecution of Morley therefore does not provide an independent basis for expanding upon facts that were not made public from the earlier investigation.
Prosecutors initially portrayed the July events as an attempted killing. Morley, then 19, was charged with attempted first-degree murder and held on $500,000 bail. The state pointed to the journal, her alleged admission, the security recording, the weapons and writings about how she obtained the shotgun. Prosecutors also commented on her demeanor after arrest, describing video that showed her appearing relaxed and making remarks while officers documented the case.
The case ultimately did not require a jury to decide whether those facts proved attempted murder beyond a reasonable doubt. In August 2026, Morley pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of attempted first-degree assault with a domestic violence designation. The public accounts of the sentence do not explain all of the plea negotiations, so it cannot be stated from the reviewed information why prosecutors accepted that offense rather than proceeding on the original attempted murder charge.
The final court orders now extend the consequences well beyond the night of the arrest. Morley was sentenced to 17 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release, while the no-contact order concerning her former boyfriend lasts 10 years. The length of that order means the restriction continues well past both the prison term and the reported supervision period.
The July 2025 confrontation is also notable for how much of the response happened before police physically reached Morley. Her parents had already sought a firearm-related court order. Their discovery of the journal generated the first warning that night. Phone-location information narrowed the search. The second family’s security camera documented an armed person at the home, and its 911 call added immediate confirmation from the scene. A drone then helped locate Morley after she moved away from the residence.
Those events establish what officials and witnesses did, but they do not establish what would otherwise have occurred. The former boyfriend was not home, and there was no shooting. It would be speculative to say which single intervention prevented injury or whether Morley would have carried out every act prosecutors said she contemplated. What the court record ultimately established through her plea was criminal responsibility for attempted first-degree assault.
With sentencing complete, the legal focus has shifted from an alleged plan and an emergency police response to enforcement of the judgment. Morley must serve the prison term imposed by the court, complete the reported period of supervised release and comply with the decade-long no-contact order. No later proceeding changing those terms was identified in the reviewed sources as of Nov. 10.
Author note: Last updated November 10, 2026.