Text messages helped foil a plot that teens had to bomb their school in Utah. At least two teens, ages 18 and 16, were plotting to detonate bombs during a school assembly. The teens also plotted their escape plan, via text, which included hijacking an airplane. Read more after the jump.
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(CNN)-
A series of text messages tipped off authorities to an alleged plot by two high school students to detonate bombs during a school assembly, according to a Utah police document.
The plot was uncovered Wednesday at Roy High School in Roy, police said.
Authorities arrested Dallin Morgan, 18, and a 16-year-old boy.
The unnamed person who received the texts, presumably from the 16-year-old suspect, alerted authorities to them, according to a probable cause affidavit.
“If I tell you one day not to go to school, make damn sure you and your brother are not there,” one text message read. “I get the feeling you know what I’m planning.”
The texter writes that “Dallin is in on it.”
Morgan, who was charged with conspiracy to possess explosives, has since been released on a $10,000 bond. The other teen was taken to a local detention center on the same charge. Additional charges are possible, officials said.
Other texts explained a plot in which the students would attack others and then make a getaway in a plane, authorities said.
“Explosives, airport, airplane,” one text read, according to the affidavit.
“We ain’t going to crash it, we’re just gonna kill and fly our way to a country that won’t send us back to the U.S.,” another text states.
Police interviewed Morgan, who they said admitted to being part of the plot. School administrators found a map of the high school marking where the security cameras are located, and where their blind spots are, the affidavit says.
“Initial investigative discovery has uncovered a plan to use explosives during a school assembly,” Roy police said in a statement Thursday. “Maps of the school and information about security systems had been prepared with plans to escape using a plane.”
The pair had made use of flight simulation programs in the preparation of their alleged plot, officials said.
The two suspects are students at the school. The 16-year-old told police he was fascinated by the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, according to the police documents.
The student said he was so intrigued by the mass killings that he interviewed the principal of that school. He said he did not want to be compared to the Columbine killers because he was smart enough to kill more people, the documents says.
He said that he had previously made a pipe bomb using “gun powder and rocket fuel.”
Twelve students and a teacher were killed during the shootings at Columbine High School.
After the arrests in Roy, authorities searched five locations for evidence, including two vehicles and two homes.
Roy is a suburb of Ogden, north of Salt Lake City.
