An intricate plot to bomb a school assembly, planned by two Roy High School students from Roy, Utah, has been foiled by a concerned fellow student who reported ominous texts to the police last Wednesday. 18-year-old Dallin Morgan and a 16-year old juvenile, seem to have plotted the bombing of a school assembly, to which, when compared to the massacre at Columbine in 1999, the juvenile was offended. Said an investigator in a written affidavit:
“[He] was offended by the fact that those killers only completed one percent of their plan and he was much more intelligent than that. [He] explained to me that he could complete his plan due to how intelligent he was.”
Yet the comparison was more than a coincidence. The 16-year-old, whose name won’t be listed due to his age, had long been “fascinated” by the school shootings at Columbine High School, in which 12 students and 1 teacher were murdered. He went so far as to visit Columbine High School and interview the principle on the premise that he was writing an article for his school paper. The principle, Frank DeAngelis, though he has been interviewed dozens of times by students across the country, remembered this interview, saying “When I received the phone call Wednesday [regarding the charges] needles to say I was shocked. [He was a] very articulate young man. Very thought-provoking questions, well thought out questions, but nothing out of the ordinary.” He also said “You do look for questions and red flags and things of that nature …just because of everything I’ve been through” (DeAngelis was the principle at Columbine at the time of the shootings).
Though the juvenile’s questions did not ask anything specific about Columbine’s school security, he had made a map of his own highschool, marking the placement of security cameras, indicating their blind spots, and noting classrooms that were especially vulnerable. The two also planned on escaping with a stolen airplane, and investigations of their computers show they’ve spent over 100 hours practicing on flight simulators.
The upsetting messages, sent to a fellow student, who reported them to authorities, include:
“If I tell you one day not to go to school, make damn sure you and your brother are not there…I’ve got the feeling you know what I’m planning.”
“I’ve just been kinda planning my get back at the world thing and I figured if you had anyone you wanted revenge on, I could see if I had anything planned.”
“Dallin is in on it. He wants revenge on the world too. … We both want to, and we have a plan to get away with it too.”
No explosives were discovered in police searches of the suspects’ two houses and two automobiles. Investigators have also confiscated four computers. Roy Police Chief Greg Whinham said “We believe key information will come from the computer databases. When we can evaluate what’s in the computers, we can begin to fill in the blanks.”
Classes were held as usual Thursday and Friday for the 1,500 students who attend Roy High. Yet tensions are high. “It’s pretty scary what could have happened,” said Joe Parrera, a parent of one of the students at Roy High. “It’s a big shock to everyone, just to see someone plan something like this.”
The suspects, both seniors, will have hearings to determine their future status at school. Weber School district Spokesman Nate Taggart says “Precedent would say they will not be returning to Roy.”