US woman admits plot for Valentine’s Day mall massacre in Canada

A Canadian court has heard how a mass-murder obsessed US woman plotted with her online lover to carry out a massacre at a shopping mall. The pair shared an interest in the 1999 Columbine High School attack.

The plot involved using rifles and gas bombs to kill shoppers at a food court at a shopping mall in Halifax, Nova Scotia, according to the BBC.

Lindsay Souvannarath surprised the court on Wednesday by pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.

Chris Hansen, a spokeswoman with the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service, said the American's plea on Tuesday in Nova Scotia's Supreme Court "was unexpected".

Souvannarath was scheduled to go to trial in May.

The American was charged along with Randall Shepherd, a Canadian, for planning the massacre in 2015. Shepherd had pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Court documents also revelaed her online scheming with a third person, James Gamble, to commit mass murder on February 14, 2015.

The murder-plotting pair began an online relationship using a chat stream and showed an obsession with death and had most photos of mass killings, according to police.

Gamble “had a pre-existing interest in school shootings and Nazism.”

The pair bonded over a shared interest in the Columbine High School attack in Colorado in 1999 in which two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher, injured 24 others before killing themselves.

They gave their plot a codename, Der Untergang, which means "the downfall" in German.

Gamble kept a hesitant Shepherd abreast of the plot, according to the court filing.

Police discovered the plans following a tip-off from Crime Stoppers just a day before the shooting spree was due to take place, as Shepherd was collecting Souvannarath from Halifax airport, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Gamble committed suicide as police closed in. Souvannarath's sentencing is scheduled for early October. The Crown has yet to make sentencing recommendations.