A 16-year-old Utah student who shared a suspicious text message with school officials helped foil apparent plans by two schoolmates to set off a bomb during a school assembly, police said.
The girl 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.
A 16-year-old suspect, whom the Associated Press isn’t naming because he’s a minor, and Dallin Morgan, 18, were pulled out of school near Ogden, Utah, last month.
The 16-year-old suspect told investigators that he had visited Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colo., and interviewed the principal about the shootings that killed 13 people there is 1999.
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.
Local and federal agents found no explosives.
