Three students arrested in plot to attack Kansas
school
February 5, 2001
Web posted at: 9:32 p.m. EST
(0232 GMT)
HOYT, Kansas (CNN) -- Three students have been arrested in
connection with a plan to carry out a Columbine-style attack on Royal Valley
High School, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office said Monday.
Richard Bradley, Jr., 18, and two juveniles, ages 16 and 17,
were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and conspiring to criminally use
explosives, the statement said. They were students at the school.
Officials searched two of the suspects' houses and seized a
hand-drawn floor plan of the school indicating "strategic locations throughout
the school," firearms, ammunition, a book and computer disks containing
instructions on how to make and set off explosives, a statement from the
sheriff's office said. Also seized was white supremacy paraphernalia, it said.
A sheriff's spokeswoman said the plot was uncovered last week,
when a student overheard two of the youths talking about their plan. She took
that information to the principal, who told the school's security officer, a
deputy with the sheriff's office.
The teen-agers had not set a date to carry out their plan, but
had discussed having it coincide with a major school event, such as the prom,
the spokeswoman said.
In the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton,
Colorado, two teen-age gunmen killed 13 students and faculty members before
killing themselves.
"They wasn't like outcasts or anything," she told a local
television reporter. "Everybody at this school is friends with everybody. You
wouldn't think that somebody like that would be prone to do that. They were all
everybody's friend."
But the threat carried the potential for harm, said school
superintendent Marceta Reilly. "It's always the balance between 'Is this just a
hoax or a prank or is this this something serious?' But in this case it turned
out to be serious."
Reilly credited a crisis plan put into place after the 1999
attack at Columbine High School in Colorado that left 15 people dead, including
the two teenage gunmen.
The plan included setting up the school help line that received
the anonymous tip and hiring the school resource officer, she said, adding that
the arrests show the system worked. "I think our schools are very safe; I think
they're safer than they ever have been, because we do take things seriously,"
she said. "We do have programs and procedures in place that help us make the
school a safe place for our kids."
But Diane Traicoff, the parent of a student at the school, said
her daughter was not convinced. "At this point, she's so very upset, she doesn't
want to return to school; she'd rather do home schooling."
Classes for the school's 275 students will be held Tuesday as
scheduled, Holloman said. Most of the planning for the attack occurred off
school property, he said.
"We're just a quiet community," said Holloman, who has served as
principal for eight years. "We've got a good school and good kids."
Last week, police in San Jose, California, arrested a
19-year-old student, Al DeGuzman, who allegedly planned a killing spree at his
college campus.
