VALLEY ROUNDUP : Reseda : Youth Charged With Making Threat

A 14-year-old Trinity Lutheran School student who allegedly threatened to blow up two classrooms and kill fellow students was charged Wednesday with making a single terrorist threat, police said.

The student, who was arrested Monday, was a member of a local Explorer Scout post that trains young men to shoot guns and master army maneuvers, the Explorer advisor said Wednesday.

The Explorer Scouts’ First City Rifle Corps, Post 124, prepares young men ages 14-18 for a career in government service or the military, said advisor Robert Feely, 73, a retired Navy engineer.

The post is affiliated with the 1st Battalion, 144 Field Artillery, California Army National Guard, Feely said. He added that he does not believe his training influenced the boy to make any threats nor that the accusations are true.

“Like a child, he may have said something in jest, some black humor,” Feely said.

He offers a one-year curriculum on field skills, including land navigation, first aid and firearms safety, he said.

“We do not teach them anything about bomb making, minor bomb placement or minor bomb disarming,” he said.

But Greg Heath, the father of two 17-year-olds in the 22-member post, said he is wary of Feely’s influence on his sons.

Since his sons joined the post, their grades have risen, but “they went from being still pretty nice boys to getting this edge, I call it false machismo.”

His sons, who want to be Marines, decorated their bedrooms with Marine netting and a Marine Corps flag and sometimes spend weekends in the desert setting up camp and learning how to occupy territory, Heath said.

When detectives searched the arrested boy’s home Wednesday, they found a World War II-vintage, Russian-made rifle that was functional but had no ammunition, Los Angeles Police Officer Robert Eisenhart said.

“A good marksman on a water tower could pick someone off a mile away with it,” he said. “But this was not like Columbine with fully automatic weapons.”