COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.-
One of two teens accused of planning a deadly attack at a high school with the goal of killing more people than those killed at Virginia Tech has been charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
The district attorney’s office said Monday that the 17-year-old boy, who was arrested earlier this month, had been charged as a juvenile and released, according to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
The Harrison High School student was accused of plotting with a 16-year-old girl to shoot as many students as possible during a pep rally in the gymnasium, with each attacking the building from opposite ends.
The two were arrested several days before a school-wide pep rally May 4 that was canceled. The girl’s status was unclear Monday.
“It was chilling,” Colorado Springs school resource officer Brian Strickland said. “There was no doubt something was in the planning stages.”
The girl allegedly said the pair wanted the death toll to top the 33 people killed at Virginia Tech so she would be famous, Strickland wrote in his report. “She gave no specific reason as to why she wanted to kill numerous students, other than she just doesn’t like people in general,” he wrote.
The girl said the pair hadn’t settled on the exact time or date of their attack.
The two 11th-graders had blueprints of the school, and the boy had instructions for making pipe bombs that investigators believe they intended to set underneath bleachers, according to police reports. The boy told police he was just curious about how to make them.
The boy and girl also were both charged with interference with staff, faculty or students of an educational institution, a misdemeanor.
The girl intended to use her father’s handgun as one of their weapons.
Authorities said the plan surfaced April 30, when the boy told his teacher he was having trouble with his girlfriend—not the girl who was arrested—and wanted to kill people.
A school security officer searched the boy’s belongings and found a notebook with entries in which the teen said he wanted to kill “everyone.” He also wrote in it that the killing would prove schools don’t do enough to protect students.
He told Strickland that he was just writing an English paper and was trying to get into the “mindset” of a killer.
Strickland also found a report on Columbine High School, where two teens killed 13 people before killing themselves, and a blueprint of Harrison High School, which the boy said he needed to find exits during fire drills.
The boy’s mother said “her son would never do anything like that to other people,” Strickland wrote in the police report.
