Revenge Of The Nerds...Geeks With Guns Plan To Take School Hostage

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4 Students Held In Plot To Seize School

Greenwood, Indiana -- Four students at Center Grove High School were arrested Thursday, accused of planning to use guns to seize control of their school, possibly today.

The students are all 15-year-old boys, said Chief Deputy Doug Cox of the Johnson County Sheriff's Department.

They were arrested after student tipsters reported an overheard conversation.

Sheriff Terry McLaughlin said a locker search didn't turn up any weapons, but at least one student had access to guns and another had talked about buying one.

All four teens are being held at the county juvenile lockup on preliminary charges of juvenile delinquency. Their names were not released.

McLaughlin said several motives were possible, but he had not heard of specific plans to harm anyone. The only individual named by any of the four students was Principal Matt Shockley, he said.
"These kids were mad at student athletes for making fun of them," the sheriff said. "That's one of the motives that has surfaced.

"They were considering a hostage situation and taking over the entire school."

Investigators thought the threat was credible, McLaughlin said. The students may have been planning to seek ransom, he said.
The Sheriff's Department plans to have a heavy presence today near all nine of the district's schools. Superintendent Candace Milhon-Baer said the schools would not be locked down.

"The primary suspects are in the hands of the Sheriff's Department," McLaughlin said, adding that students should be safe at school.

The plot might have been intended to take place as soon as today, the sheriff said. Half a dozen investigators were among officers who responded to the high school Thursday.

The school still plans to have an assembly this afternoon for the boys varsity basketball team, which is competing in sectionals at Southport High School on Indianapolis' Far Southside. Center Grove High School is southwest of Greenwood at 2717 S. Morgantown Road and has 2,250 students.

Any threat must be taken seriously, the sheriff said.

"I'm not highly familiar with those individuals," Shockley said at the news conference. "Certainly it's a little disconcerting to know I was a part of the plot."

Administrators received a tip at 7:30 a.m. Thursday from students who said they had overheard the other students discussing a plan to bring guns to school. Administrators quickly called the Sheriff's Department.

Investigators have spoken with the arrested students' parents, McLaughlin said, and were talking Thursday night with more students whose names surfaced during interviews.

Senior Kathleen Spencer, 18, said she heard about the arrests for the first time on the evening news. She said she had seen an assistant principal and two other men searching lockers.

"None of us were really worried," Spencer said. "We just sort of went on with our day. . . . There was a little hint that something was going on."

The district posted an alert on www. centergrove.k12.in.us about 4 p.m. An automated phone system called parents and directed them to read the online message.

Kenneth Trump, a school safety consultant who has worked with districts in the Indianapolis area, has tracked an upswing in school-related shootings in the past few years. He has counted 72 nonfatal shootings nationally this school year, he said, compared with 52 last year and 68 two years ago.

"The good news is that we're talking about a potential tragedy prevented," Trump said of the Center Grove arrests. He is president of Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services.

McLaughlin said the information gleaned by investigators so far was specific enough to cause worry.

"This is something that doesn't happen in Johnson County like in Marion County or other urban counties throughout the United States."