Bomb plot teen faces charges

PORTLAND,OREGON: A US teenager who intended to blow up his school will be charged with attempted aggravated murder after six bombs were found in his bedroom, a prosecutor said on Saturday.

Grant Acord, 17, planned to attack his school in Oregon in a plot ‘‘inspired’’ by a 1999 mass shooting at a high school in Columbine, Colorado, Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson said.

Grant will be charged as an adult and also faces six counts of manufacturing and possessing a destructive device after investigators found the six bombs in his bedroom, Mr Haroldson said.

The teenager was taken to a juvenile jail on Thursday night after police received a tip that he was making a bomb to blow up West Albany High School.

Mr Haroldson said Grant had written plans, a checklist and a specific timeline for the attack. The explosives investigators found included pipebombs, Molotov cocktails, a Drano bomb and napalm, he said. Police found no bombs during a search of the high school.

Mr Haroldson declined to provide the specific date Grant allegedly planned to attack the school, but said it would be included in court paperwork.

‘‘In any case that you have a young person that in essence plans to take a video game approach to killing people at school, you have to take a close look at the mental health issues,’’ he said.

The district attorney said it did not appear the youth was targetting a specific person or group of people. He said Grant will likely be arraigned tomorrow.

‘‘I can’t say enough about how lucky we are that there was an intervention,’’ Mr Haroldson said.