ROY, Utah – The two teens had a detailed plot, blueprints of the school and security systems, but no explosives. They had hours of flight simulator training on a home computer and a plan to flee the country, but no plane. Still, the police chief said, the plot was real.

“It wasn’t like they were hanging out playing video games,” Roy Police Chief Gregory Whinham said Friday. “They put a lot of effort into it.”

Dallin Morgan, 18, and a 16-year-old friend were arrested Wednesday at the high school, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, after a fellow student reported that she received ominous text messages from one of the suspects.

“If I tell you one day not to go to school, make damn sure you and your brother are not there,” one message read, according to court records. “We ain’t gonna crash it, we’re just gonna kill and fly our way to a country that won’t send us back to the U.S.,” read another message.

While police don’t have a motive, one text message noted they sought “revenge on the world.”

The suspects say they were inspired by the deadly 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., and the younger suspect even visited the school last month to interview the principal about the shootings and security measures.

However, one suspect told authorities it was offensive to be compared to the Columbine shooters because “those killers only completed one percent of their plan,” according to a probable cause statement.

The teens had so studied their own school’s security system that they knew how to avoid being seen on the facility’s surveillance cameras, authorities said.

 

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