Authorities say they arrested two teenage girls who they say were planning a “mass casualty attack” to bomb and shoot up a high school in the Houston area.
Chief Larry Baimbridge of the Spring Branch Independent School District Police said that the 15- and 16-year-old girls were arrested on Tuesday, about 30 minutes after police were told about the threat.
The police wouldn’t say their names because they are children.
The Houston FBI field office said it had learned “that two underage teens from the Houston area were planning a mass casualty attack” at Memorial High School in Hedwig Village, a suburb of Houston.
KPRC, an NBC station in Houston, said the girls were accused of making threats by bringing guns and pipe bombs to school. The 16-year-old is supposed to go to Memorial, but Baimbridge said he was going to a different district school for kids who are falling behind. She could have gone back to Memorial after catching up. The teen goes to Willis High School and is 15 years old.
Baimbridge said that the police had “communications” that showed the girls were planning the attack. He said that the “specificity” of those messages was what made the police move so quickly.
“When you read the context of the communication, it’s pretty obvious this is well beyond just throwing some ideas around,” said he. “This was a very clear plan.”
The police chief said that he thinks the girls had been planning the attack for “many weeks, if not months,” and that “it started ramping up” in the last few days.
The chief was asked about a possible reason and said, “The only thing I could figure out was that she didn’t like her classmates in general.”
People in the Montgomery County Willis Independent School District were told about the event on Wednesday.
“We are so grateful to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies that work together to keep students across the nation safe from those who intend to harm others,” the district said in a note. “This incident affirms the importance of awareness and vigilance in protecting our students and staff.”
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said that more safety steps were put in place at schools in the district.
“We are taking this very seriously and quickly because threats of violence in our schools will not be accepted,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
The teen, who was 16 years old, was charged with a third-degree crime for making a radical threat. There were other charges against the 15-year-old that put him in jail.
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