Five students were arrested today in a foiled shooting plot at Riverton High School in southeast Kansas. The arrests came after details of the plan appeared on the social networking Web site MySpace.com.
Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Norman says deputies found guns,
ammunition, knives and encoded messages in the bedroom of one of the youths. The youths, all males, range in age from 16 to 18.
The sheriff says he'll ask the prosecutor to file charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Norman says officials at the high school began investigating on Tuesday after learning that a threatening message had been posted on the Web site by a student.
The message discussed the significance of April 20: Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School attack in Colorado. In that case, two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher, wounded 24 others, then took their own lives.
The sheriff says the brief messages ``stated that there was going to be a shooting at the Riverton school and that people should wear bulletproof vest and flak jackets.''