RALEIGH, N.C. — A transgender man was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison earlier this month after threatening a mass shooting in Raleigh because he said he could not receive continued gender-affirming care.

Federal court documents refer to the person as Ashley Moore. The News & Observer was not able to determine if Moore goes by a different name. Moore was undergoing treatment for gender dysphoria via the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Michigan before moving to North Carolina.

Moore did not immediately receive the same care after moving to Raleigh in the summer of 2025, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of North Carolina. The press release also refers to Moore as a woman and uses the pronoun “she” in referring to Moore.

Gender dysphoria is a clinical term referring to the feelings generated when someone’s sex at birth doesn’t match their gender identity.

People who don’t have access to appropriate gender-affirming care may experience worsened mental health symptoms, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Tufts University’s Center for Health Systems and Policy.

“There will be a bloodbath in Raleigh come Monday,” Moore wrote in an email to VA employees in South Carolina shortly after moving to Raleigh in the summer of 2025. “Ending with my blood. My mass shooting will be the catalyst for the better treatment of veterans, especially LGBTQ veterans and I will be the FORCED martyr.”

Moore also wrote in that same email about attempts to receive gender-affirming care.

“My attempts at advocating for myself do not matter,” Moore wrote. “My attempts at trying to get my next testosterone injection do not matter.”

Moore pleaded guilty in January to a charge of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce to kidnap, kill or injure people and was also sentenced to three years’ supervised release after leaving prison.

A mental health history

Raleigh police arrested Moore on Aug. 14, 2025 outside of Second Street Place, a homeless shelter just off of Old Wake Forest Road in north Raleigh.

Moore was screaming and behaving erratically, when officers approached, according to court documents. Police detained him to see if committing him to a mental health institution was appropriate.

Moore emailed the threats to the VA earlier that same morning, according to a complaint filed in 2025.

“According to team employees, this email address had sent four (4) of these messages to the Suicide Prevention Team (in Durham) in the last thirty minutes,” the complaint says.

In the past, Moore sent communications calling people derogatory names, but VA employees saw the threats as a significant escalation, according to the complaint.

In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan recommended Moore get mental health treatment while in prison.

Previous threats

This was not the first time Moore made these kinds of threats, according to the complaint.

He was previously arrested in 2023 for “intimidation” by Indianapolis police, though those charges were dropped.

In 2013, Moore admitted to threatening to blow up a VA location somewhere in the United States, the complaint says.

He also made statements threatening the White House, Pentagon and Congress, though he said he did not intend to carry out those threats.

“We will not tolerate threats to our citizens,” U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle of the Eastern District of North Carolina said in a press release. “Too often, threats take the first step to actual violence, and we will protect the safety of our community. No one is above the law in EDNC.”

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