TAMPA – Florida police said yesterday they had arrested a 17-year-old who had material to make pipe bombs at his home and had planned to attack and cause mass casualties at the Tampa high school that had expelled him.
“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 said.
Police named the suspect, who was detained and charged on Tuesday, as Jared Cano (17) and said his target was Freedom High School in Hillsborough County.
Ms Castor said Cano had hoped “to cause more casualties than were suffered at Columbine”. In April 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Colorado killed 12 students and one teacher in one of the deadliest school massacres in US history.
Tampa police, acting on an informant’s tip, learned that Cano had planned his attack for the first day of classes next week, Ms Castor said. Cano has been arrested in the past on various charges including burglary and carrying a concealed weapon, police said.
Police searched his home and found pipe bomb material including fuel sources, shrapnel, plastic tubing and timing and fusing devices. They also found a journal with drawings of rooms in the school and statements apparently indicating his intention to carry out a deadly attack, authorities said.
A picture of Cano holding a machete is featured on his Facebook page, along with the words “lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten”. In court yesterday he told the judge: “I don’t know what to say.” – (Reuters)