Columbine-style attack averted -- 2 students arrested in Elk Grove
Charlie Goodyear, Chuck Squatriglia and Mark Martin, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle
Elk Grove -- A plot by two students to carry out a Columbine-style massacre today inside their Sacramento County high school cafeteria was thwarted after a parent of one of their classmates tipped off police, authorities said Tuesday.
Sacramento County sheriff's deputies arrested two 15-year-old students of Laguna Creek High School in Elk Grove on suspicion of conspiracy, making terrorist threats and hate crime charges. Authorities say the suspects planned to target African American students in their attack.
The unidentified white suspects, a freshman and a sophomore, were planning to rob local sporting goods stores, steal weapons, storm the school's cafeteria and shoot students during the lunch hour today, authorities said.
Investigators searched the home of one suspect and seized a .22-caliber rifle owned by a parent. Authorities also recovered Nazi-themed drawings and a map of the school cafeteria. Four other students have been questioned in connection with the plot but have not been arrested.
"These kids had some major hate toward a lot of different groups,'' said Sgt. Lou Fatur, a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.
According to a statement from the Elk Grove Unified School District, the suspects were also planning to set off explosives. Letters notifying parents of the plot were sent home with students on Tuesday.
Students and teachers were shocked by the news.