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From CTV News:
The Associated Press
Date: Friday Jan. 27, 2012 9:46 AM ET
SALT LAKE CITY — A 16-year-old U.S. student who shared a suspicious text message foiled apparent plans by two schoolmates to set off a bomb during a school assembly and run away in a stolen airplane, police said.
Bailey Gerhardt told The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper she received the text from a friend, one of the suspects - "If I told you to stay home on a certain day, would you?" - and told one of the administrators, which led to the teens' arrest.
That 16-year-old boy, whom The Associated Press isn't naming because he's a minor, and Dallin Morgan, 18, were pulled out of school Wednesday.
"It was the work of a very courageous student who came forward," Roy police spokeswoman Anna Bond said Thursday. "It could have been a disaster."
Gerhardt said the 16-year-old was angry after being dumped by his girlfriend, and he told Gerhardt he had looked into the 1999 mass shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.
The teen later told investigators he was so "fascinated" by that massacre that he visited the school and interviewed the principal about the shootings that killed 13 people. Roy police said the principal, Frank DeAngelis, confirmed that the boy made his visit Dec. 12.
The Roy High School plot "was months in planning," said Roy Chief of Police Gregory Whinham, and included plans for a device designed to "cause as much harm as possible to students and faculty" at the school, which has about 1,500 students.
Both students had "absolute knowledge of the security systems and the layout of the school," Bond said. "They knew where the security cameras were. Their original plan was to set off explosives during an assembly. We don't know what date they were planning to do this, but they had been planning it for months."
School officials said there were no imminent plans to hold a school assembly.
The FBI is examining the suspects' computers, police said. Local and federal agents searched the school, two vehicles belonging to the suspects and their homes but found no explosives.
Morgan told police the 16-year-old suspect had previously made a pipe bomb using gun powder and rocket fuel.
The two students prepared by logging hundreds of hours on flight simulator software on their home computers, and they planned to take a plane at Ogden Hinckley Airport after the bombing, Bond said.
The 16-year-old also texted to a friend that "We're just gonna kill and fly our way to a country that won't send us back to the US," according to a probable cause statement police filed to make the arrests late Wednesday.
Morgan was being held on $10,000 bail on suspicion of conspiracy to commit mass destruction. The juvenile was in custody on the same charge. Prosecutors were weighing possible additional charges.
The parents of both students "woke up in the middle of a nightmare," Bond said. "They've been very co-operative."
Link:
Girl's text message foils U.S. school bomb plot | CTV News
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