Officials are touting a young Tennessee gamer as a hero after the boy thwarted a mass shooting allegedly being planned and discussed on a gamer chat site by two Tehama County teenagers.
The two boys, ages 14 and 15, had planned a shooting at Evergreen Institute of Excellence, in the Northern California town of Cottonwood, where they expected to kill up to 100 people, said Tehama County Sheriff Dave Kain during a news conference Tuesday. Before the deadly attack, the two close friends allegedly planned to kill one set of their parents.
“This was serious,” Kain said. “It would have changed our community as a whole.
The two friends allegedly wrote a manifesto for the deadly attack, took photos of themselves in the same clothes and posed as the teenage killers in the 1999 Columbine mass shooting, and spoke in an online game’s chat about the planned shooting.
It was in that game’s chat that a Tennessee boy became aware of the possible attack, and decided to call the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office on the evening of May 9 about the disturbing chat.
Kain said the gamer’s decision to call authorities about the possible attack could have saved lives.
“This young man had the courage and heroic instincts to call our agency and notify us in order to mitigate any possible threat to our citizens and, possibly, our young people,” Kain said.
The gamer provided investigators with the suspect’s gamer tag, contents of the chat, as well as a shared photo one of the suspects posted of them posing like the Columbine school shooters.
Kain said the shared image helped investigators contact school administrators, identify the two students, and take both of them into custody.
“Our investigators took that tip seriously since the beginning,” Kain said.
Investigators served search warrants at the homes of the two suspects, where they found improvised explosive devices they believe were made to use in the school attack. Firearms were also seized, Kain said.
The two friends had planned to go forward with the attack on May 9, but didn’t because one of them backed out, he said. It’s unclear what the motivation for the school shooting was, but Kain said one of the teen suspects talked about being bullied when interviewed by investigators.
The two suspects were booked on suspicion of making criminal threats, possession of a destructive device, manufacturing a destructive device, and conspiracy to commit a felony, Kain said. Investigators are also working with prosecutors and looking at the possibility of a charge of conspiracy to commit mass murder.
The two teens appeared in court Thursday, and were ordered to remain in custody, per a request from the Tehama County District Attorney’s Office, according to a statement from the office.
Kain said sheriff officials have spoken with school administrators to provide additional security at the school, but said the threat was isolated to the two suspects already in custody.
As a sign of confidence, the sheriff said his son returned to classes at the same middle school on Monday.
Kain declined to offer any details on the underage gamer who reported the threat, but said he and his parents were told they were invited to visit Tehama County to be recognized.
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