Police: College student arrested after planning campus shooting

An aeronautical university student from South Florida was arrested Thursday after authorities received tips from other students that he was planning to shoot people on campus on the last day before winter break, police said.

When officers arrested John Hagins, 19, at his apartment in Daytona

Beach, they found a folding gun and hundreds of

rounds of ammunition in his backpack, according to a news release from the Daytona Beach Police Department.

“We could have had a tragedy unfold today,” said Daytona Beach Police Department Chief Jakari Young. “Instead, these students reported it to the school and that

allowed us to get to work right away and bring Hagins into custody before he could carry out his plans.”

Police say he is from North Miami Beach. His Facebook page says he graduated in 2020 from Monsignor Edward Pace High School, a Catholic school near Miami Opa-locka Executive Airport, according to media reports.

The police department was first contacted by campus security at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University overnight Thursday after students had gone to them with their concerns about Hagins. Investigators saw social media posts by Hagins in which he outlined his plans to bring the folding gun to campus. He apparently had sold his vehicle to buy the gun and ammunition, the police news release said. Hagins confessed to making the threats, Young said, but told investigators it was all a joke, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

“He may want to claim that it was all a joke and he wasn’t serious about it but we don’t find anything funny about discussing a mass shooting on a campus,” Young said. “If he was looking for attention, he’s got it. I don’t think he wanted the kind of attention that he has but he’s got it.”

Detectives were still determining a motive but learned Hagins was in jeopardy of failing classes at the school and had been cited for a traffic infraction the previous day, the news release said. Hagins was facing charges of written threats to injure or kill, terrorism and attempted first degree homicide, according to the police department. He was being held Thursday evening on no bond. There was no online court docket for Hagins, as of Thursday evening, so it was unknown if he had an attorney.