By Salvador Hernandez, Los Angeles Times
The officials praise a young Tennessee player as a hero after the boy thwarted a mass shooting that allegedly planned and discussed on a player’s cat site by two teenagers from the county of Tehama, California.
The two boys, aged 14 and 15, had planned a shooting at the Evergreen Institute of Excellence, in the city of Cottonwood of Northern California, where they expected to kill up to 100 people, said the Sheriff of the county of Tehama, Dave Kain, at a press conference on Tuesday. Before the deadly attack, the two close friends would have planned to kill a set of their parents.
“It was serious,” said Kain. “It would have changed our community as a whole.
The two friends would have written a manifesto for the murderous attack, taken photos of themselves in the same clothes and presented themselves as teenage killers during the mass shooting of Columbine in 1999, and spoke in an online game game on the planned shoot.
It was in the cat of this game that a boy of Tennessee became aware of the possible attack and decided to call the Sheriff’s office of the county of Tehama on the evening of May 9 about the disturbing cat.
Kain said that the player’s decision to call the authorities about the possible attack could have saved lives.
“This young man had the courage and heroic instincts to call our agency and inform us in order to alleviate any possible threat to our citizens and, perhaps, our young people,” said Kain.
The player provided the investigators with the suspect player label, the content of the cat, as well as a shared photo that one of the suspects published by posing like the shooters of the Columbine school.
Kain said that the shared image has helped investigators contact school administrators, identify the two students and put them in police custody.
“Our investigators have taken this tip seriously from the start,” said Kain.
Investigators served as searching mandates at the home of the two suspects, where they found improvised explosive devices which, according to them, were made for the school attack. Firearms have also been seized, said Kain.
The two friends had planned to move forward with the attack on May 9, but not because one of them fell, he said. We do not know what was the motivation for the school shooting, but Kain said that one of the suspicious teenagers had spoken of intimidation when he was questioned by investigators.
The two suspects were reserved on suspicion of having made criminal threats, possession of a destructive device, manufacturing a destructive and conspiracy in order to commit a crime, said Kain. Investigators also work with prosecutors and examine the possibility of a conspiracy accusation to commit mass murder.
The two teenagers appeared in court on Thursday and were sentenced to remain in detention, according to a request from the Tehama County Prosecutor’s office, according to a statement from the office.
Kain said that sheriff managers had spoken with school administrators to provide additional security at school, but said the threat was isolated from the two suspects already in detention.
As a sign of confidence, the sheriff said that his son had returned to lessons at the same college on Monday.
Kain refused to offer details on the minors who reported the threat, but said that he and his parents had been invited to visit Tehama county to be recognized.
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Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
