Boys Plotted Takeover, Police Say : Arrests: Three Huntington Beach middle-school students, one heavily armed, allegedly planned to hold a classroom of pupils hostage.

A 13-year-old boy armed with two loaded guns, a machete and a knife was arrested at school along with two 12-year-old friends just hours before they had planned to take a classroom of students hostage, as they had seen on a recent television show, police said Friday.

The three boys had been planning to execute the takeover Thursday afternoon at Marine View Middle School, officials said. They apparently got the idea about two weeks ago after watching an episode of “Cops” that had a segment about a hostage situation in a classroom, said James R. Tarwater, superintendent of the Ocean View School District. The Fox network show features videotaped incidents involving police around the country.

“We look at this as quite serious,” said Huntington Beach Police Lt. Luis Ochoa. The students “had a plan, and the plan was to take random people hostages.”

Tarwater said the boys apparently “were looking for certain classrooms that had windows so the cameras, TV cameras, could show what’s going on inside.”

Police and school officials said the boys, all from Huntington Beach, apparently did not have a vendetta against any particular students or teachers and were unclear in interviews as to why they might want to take hostages or get media attention.

Police said the 13-year-old had stuffed several weapons in his backpack Thursday morning and carried them around all day. They were a loaded .22-caliber revolver and a loaded .38-caliber revolver, a machete and a dagger-like knife, school officials said.

All of the weapons belong to his parents, officials said. Police are investigating whether the parents or any other adults may have violated a 1992 state law making it a criminal offense to leave a weapon in a place accessible to children, Ochoa said.

All three youths, whose names were not released, were taken into custody on suspicion of conspiracy and possession of a weapon on school grounds, Ochoa said. The 13-year-old was held at Juvenile Hall in Orange. The 12-year-olds were released to the custody of their parents, Ochoa said.

School officials suspended all three youths, pending expulsion proceedings.

On Friday, the school sent home flyers about the incident to all parents and guardians and made a school psychologist available for any student who wanted to talk. On Monday, the school district will bring in three crisis counselors, officials said.

“It’s an incident that is totally unpredictable,” said principal Janet K. Reece, who told parents of the incident Thursday night at a regularly scheduled meeting of the Parent-Teacher-Student Assn.

“This is an unfortunate situation, but I think they handled it like champs,” PTSA President Jacque Nelson said of school officials.

“I don’t have any fear for my kids to go there,” said Nelson, who has three children at the 700-student school on Tilburg Drive. “I feel we’re lucky, it could have been a lot worse.”

The three boys had attended the school for a year, received good grades and did not have trouble with other students, school officials said. The school knew nothing of the plot until another, uninvolved student went to the administrative office with the news.

The 13-year-old had displayed some of the arsenal in his backpack to the student at lunch time in an apparent attempt to persuade the boy to join him and the 12-year-olds, school officials said. Instead, the boy went to the office with the information about the weapons and the plot.

“It is significant that someone who knew about it went to the principal and informed them that it was going to occur,” Tarwater said. “We see him as a hero.”

“This is a totally isolated incident,” said John Thomas, the director of student services for the Ocean View School District. “There is no way to predict or prepare” for such an incident, he said.

Last year, the middle school expelled a 13-year-old who carried an explosive device to school, Thomas said. Districtwide, about five students have been expelled for carrying weapons or other offenses in the past 30 years, Thomas said.