Tampa police thwart teen's Columbine-style plot

Bomb-making materials, maps of school and written statements found at Florida home



Jared Cano, 17, is led out of a courtroom in Tampa after being charged with possession of bomb-making materials. Photograph: Diez, Cherie/AP

Reuters
The Guardian, Wed 17 Aug 2011 21.15 BST

Florida police say they have thwarted a plot by a 17-year-old to attack his former school, after discovering bomb-making material at his home. "We were probably able to thwart a potentially catastrophic event the likes of which the city of Tampa has not seen and hopefully never will," Tampa police chief Jane Castor told a news conference.

Tampa police said Jared Cano's target was the Freedom high school in Hillsborough county. The local police chief, Jane Castor, said Cano, who had been expelled from the school, had hoped "to cause more casualties than were suffered at Columbine".

In April 1999, two students at the Columbine high school in Colorado killed 12 students and one teacher in one of the deadliest school massacres in US history.

Castor said Tampa police, acting on a tip from an informant, learned that Cano had been planning an attack for the first day of term next week.

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