Two teenagers aged 13 and 14 are suspected of having planned a mass murder.
They were arrested this Thursday in Lehigh Acres, Florida (United States).
The arrest followed a report made by one of their classmates from Harns Marsh College.
The latter had explained to a professor to have seen a gun in the backpack of one of the two students on Wednesday, reports
NBC News
.
After being warned, the police searched the bag of a college student at the facility.
No weapons were found there but a map showing the location of the school's security cameras was there.
The search of the homes of the defendants led to the discovery of a firearm and several knives.
"Within seconds, we had a Columbine here"
Charged, the two college students underwent a psychological assessment. Investigators suspect them of having researched the making of homemade bombs and the purchase of firearms on the black market. The suspects would also have documented abundantly on the massacre of Columbine, Colorado in April 1999. Two students had killed 13 college students and a teacher before committing suicide. "Within seconds, we had a Columbine here," Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno commented at a press conference.
He considered that his teams had "avoided a very violent and dangerous act".
The officer drew a parallel with another mass killing in schools, that of the high school in Parkland, Florida (United States), where 17 people had died in February 2018. Prosecuted for preparations for a mass killing, the two teenagers will be jailed for at least three weeks in a juvenile detention center, until their next appearance before a judge on September 27, adds
the Huffington Post
.
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