Alleged Plan for Campus Killing Spree

A 14-year-old boy who students said had threatened to kill classmates was arrested Tuesday at Fullerton’s Ladera Vista Junior High School.

The student had devised an elaborate plan to take over the school and shoot classmates, with maps showing his “path of destruction” and his escape route, Fullerton Police Sgt. Joe Klein said. The scale of the plan was like that of the shootings earlier this year at Columbine High School in Colorado, police said.

Investigators also questioned a second youth, a 13-year-old, but interviews with about 20 students convinced officers that only the 14-year-old was involved, Klein said. The younger student was released.

A search of both boys’ homes found no weapons, explosives or weapon paraphernalia, police said.

Andrea Goettinger, who teaches U.S. history at the school, said there was no panic on campus as faculty and students learned what had happened. Teachers heard details at an 11 a.m. staff meeting, she said, in which the threats and arrest were revealed but the student’s identity was not.

“It was actually relatively quiet,” she said. “A limited number of students knew about it.”

The Fullerton incident comes as national attention is focused again on Columbine after the release this week of videos left by killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. On film, the two brag and rage as they plot to carry out what they hoped would be the biggest mass murder in U.S. history. Twelve students and a teacher were killed in their attack and 23 others were wounded before the teens killed themselves.

Fullerton police would not say what might have motivated the Ladera Vista student to plan an attack or whether he might have been influenced by the Columbine tapes. Instead, they praised the students who reported the boy’s threats.

Klein said that the Fullerton School District “had a good system in place to address such a situation, and the students did the right thing in going to the principal. They helped avert what might have been a very bad situation.”

Since the shooting at Columbine, there have been several incidents across the nation, including a handful in Orange County, in which students at middle and high schools have been questioned and in some cases arrested on suspicion of making threats to shoot and kill others on their campuses.

At Canyon High School in Anaheim last spring, two boys were arrested on suspicion of making bomb threats on the Internet. Two other Anaheim boys were arrested after police found bombs, bomb-making material, guns, ammunition and Nazi propaganda at their homes.

In the wake of Tuesday’s incident at Ladera Vista, school district officials said parents have no reason to fear for their children’s safety and should not be afraid to send them to school. Administrators said they plan to send a letter of reassurance home with each student today.

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Times community correspondent Luladey B. Tadesse contributed to this report.