The student’s lost notebook, found in a McDonald’s parking lot, was returned to his Long Island high school. Its contents were not the stuff of normal teenage journals.
“Students will die. Ha.”
Authorities said several frightening journal entries by the 15-year-old referred to plans for a mass murder of classmates and staff at Connetquot High School on April 20, 2008, exactly nine years after 12 students and a teacher were slain at Columbine High School in Colorado.
“I will start a chain of terrorism in the world,” authorities quoted the student as writing. “This will go down in history. Take out everyone there. Perfecto.”
The notebook’s owner was arrested with a teenage friend for allegedly plotting an attack at the school in Bohemia, about 50 miles east of New York City, authorities said Friday. Officials also recovered videotapes similar to those made by the two Columbine student killers, who killed themselves after the 1999 attack in Littleton, Colo.
The suspects, co-workers at the McDonald’s where the journal was found, identified several of their potential victims by name in one of the videotapes, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said.
A search warrant was issued for the 15-year-old’s computer. Dormer said the teen attempted several times to buy five pounds of explosive black powder and an Uzi machine rifle, and said police were still investigating to see “if any weapons have been acquired over the Internet.”
'The world was against him'
The 15-year-old, whom authorities identified as the driving force behind the plan, was recently suspended from the school for making threats, Dormer said. The other suspect was a friend who attended another Long Island high school.
On July 6, an unidentified woman who found the notebook in the parking lot of the fast food restaurant returned it to the high school. School authorities discovered it contained “numerous terrorist threats and plans to attack the school,” police said.
“He felt that everyone was against him,” Dormer said of the 15-year-old, whose name was withheld because of his age. “The world was against him. He was upset at life in general and the world in general.”
Both teens were charged with misdemeanor conspiracy, punishable by up to a year in jail.
'A nice boy'
The 15-year-old appeared in juvenile court Friday in handcuffs. The charges were not read, and a plea was not entered. Instead the judge ordered two weeks of medical evaluation at the Sagamore Children’s Hospital, according to a report posted on Newsday’s Web site. The teen’s mother and stepfather were in the courtroom, but would not comment.
The second suspect, 17-year-old Michael McDonough, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Friday, with bail set at $25,000 cash or $50,000 bond.
A woman who answered the telephone Friday at the county’s Legal Aid, which is representing McDonough, declined to comment and hung up.
His father told the court that McDonough was receiving mental health counseling. Neighbors in the mobile home park where McDonough lives described him as “a nice boy” who did errands for them like mowing the lawn.
McDonough was due back in court on Monday.
More than 2,000 students attend Connetquot High School in Bohemia, a working-class community near Brookhaven on the eastern end of Long Island. The school building is open during the summer, but does not hold classes.