Teen foiled as gun jams
JOPLIN, Mo. -- Fascinated by the Columbine bloodbath, a 13-year-old boy in a black trenchcoat and mask carried an assault rifle into his school yesterday, pointed it at students and fired a shot into a ceiling before the weapon jammed. No one was hurt.
"Please don't make me do this," he was quoted as telling administrators.
His arrest ended what police called a "well-thought-out" plan to terrorize his school.
Police said a note in the student's backpack indicated he had planted an explosive in the school but no bombs were found.
Police described his weapon as a Mac-90, a replica of an AK-47 assault rifle, which belonged to his parents.
Lieut. Geoff Jones said the boy's motives were unclear. School officials said the student had no major discipline problems.
POINTED GUN
The seventh-grader, whose name was not released, pointed the gun at two students inside Joplin Memorial Middle School but was confronted by an administrator who tried to talk him into putting the gun down, Jones said.
The boy refused and fired a shot into the ceiling of an entryway. He tried to continue firing but the rifle jammed. It was not clear whether he was aiming at anyone. He left and officers arrested him behind a nearby building.
Superintendent Jim Simpson said police told him the boy had a fascination with the Columbine High shooting that left 15 people dead near Littleton, Colo., in 1999.
The boy was wearing a black trenchcoat -- like the student gunmen at Columbine -- and had a T-shirt over his head with eye holes cut out, Officer Curt Farmer said.
Farmer said that along with the note indicating an explosive was placed in the school, the boy's backpack held military manuals, instructions on assembling an improvised explosive device and detailed drawings of the school.
PLANNED 'FOR LONG TIME'
"This was quite well-thought-out," Farmer said. "He had been planning this for a long time."
Farmer said it is not uncommon for people in the area to own assault weapons.
Joplin, which has 41,000 residents, is on the Kansas state line about 225 km south of Kansas City, Mo.
Schools across the U.S. have been on alert since three deadly school shootings in three states in a week. In Pennsylvania, church bells tolled yesterday morning in remembrance of the five young Amish girls killed at their one-room schoolhouse one week earlier.
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