A teen girl was arrested for "potentially planning" to carry out mass attack in her school in Utah.
The 15-year-old, who goes to Weber High School, claimed to be conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, revealed court documents, according to KSL TV. The documents revealed that on Sept. 30, she was charged with use of a weapon of mass destruction, a first-degree felony, in 2nd District Juvenile Court.
According to search warrant affidavits, on Sept. 23 Weber County sheriff's deputies got a report of messages from an Instagram account "containing terroristic threats including the act of committing a mass school shooting" after which the investigation began. The messages were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the sheriff's office was contacted after learning the account allegedly belonged to somebody in Weber County.
Ksl.com reported that the warrant said that the messages "referenced acquiring firearms, and described the act that she was about to perform 'Like Columbine,' referring to the infamous terrorist event which occurred at Columbine High School." The student had planned to shoot multiple individuals, claimed the messages.
After she admitted to police that she sent the messages to people whom she met online, investigators seized her phone. The investigating deputy wrote in the affidavit that on the phone he saw a Google search containing images of surveillance video of a school shooter. Text messages in which she wrote that the shooting will be her way to make her mark on society, were found by investigators. In some of the messages, she said that her alleged terror attack was being planned for April 2024, and she talked about getting napalm on her shirt.
According to the warrant, she used a diary app in which investigators found messages "which documented her decisions such as pros and cons of potential co-conspirators and the following statement, 'I need guns. And I need bullets. And I need alcohol. And I need bombs...And I need to kill all of these (people).'"
On her phone, there was also a video of the girl manufacturing napalm in her house's driveway. In the video, she said that the blue substance on her shirt was napalm, and then she lit it on fire. Detectives searched her house, but did not find any napalm, though they believe she did have some at one point of time, Weber County Sheriff's Lieutenant Cortney Ryan said Tuesday, and credited deputies for working "through the night for a couple of nights" to solve the case and make sure "kids were safe."
Ryan said that the teenager was booked into juvenile detention where he hopes she will get help if needed.
A letter from Weber High School read that the threat involved some planning on the part of the girl, but "there was never an imminent danger to the school or other students," and that early intervention and action by law enforcement "foiled any potential acts of violence."
