Teenagers ‘plotted school gun and bomb massacre’

Boys idolised Columbine killers, jury told at trial

TWO 14-YEAR-OLD boys planned to re-enact the Columbine High School massacre by killing pupils and teachers at their North Yorkshire school, a jury has been told.

The pair, both now 15, heroworshipped Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – the teenagers who killed 12 students and a teacher in Colorado in 1999 – prosecutors told Leeds Crown Court.

The court heard how the boys emulated the Columbine killers’ habit of wearing trench coats and the older of the two – said to be the leader – “idolised” Harris.

Paul Greaney QC, prosecuting, told a jury yesterday that the pair were planning an attack at their school in the North Yorkshire market town of Northallerton and shared a list of people they wanted dead.

Mr Greaney said: “Those two teenagers researched and discussed those killers and their interest in them turned to heroworship. It was against that background that they plotted their own attack upon the school they attended.

“In that attack, they intended to shoot and kill other pupils and teachers against whom they held a grievance.

“They also, like their heroes, intended to deploy explosives and researched bomb-making techniques to that end.”

Mr Greaney said: “They intended a re-enactment of the Columbine High School Massacre although fortunately, in the result, they were stopped before their plans were put into action.”

The defendants – one wearing school uniform – each sat with one of their parents as they listened to the case opening.

The prosecutor described how the older boy had started a relationship with a girl in June last year and, at one point, had carved his name into her lower back.

He said the girl’s father kept seven shotguns in a locked cabinet and that the boy regularly asked about them and “sought access to them as part of the plan to attack the school”.

After the girl’s parents banned the pair from seeing each other, the boy went to her house “dressed like Eric Harris and was wearing a t-shirt on which he had written a slogan in pen that was a threat... to her parents,” he said.

Mr Greaney said the boy fled carrying a large knife which was later found with the word ‘Love’ written on the blade.

A diary was later found in which the boy had written: “Her parents need to die.”

Both boys deny a conspiracy to murder and a range of alternative charges.

The older boy also denies unlawfully wounding his girlfriend and the aggravated burglary of her parents’ house.

The trial, which continues today, is expected to last four weeks.