Amid a national rash of school shootings, officials on Wednesday charged a 12-year-old Homewood boy with solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit kidnapping after he allegedly wrote a letter threatening four female classmates.
Investigators said the boy, who was charged as a juvenile, threatened to abduct four classmates and kill one of them.
Though investigators did not find weapons at the boy’s home nor evidence that he had access to weapons, they refused to dismiss a two-page letter the youth allegedly sent to six friends asking for help.
The letter at times sounded like adolescent fantasy, discussing plans to build a two-story barricade in which to imprison the girls. But officials in Homewood and across the nation are struggling to determine when a fantasy can become a threat and are deciding to take no chances.
In such an atmosphere, an incident that might have ended in the principal’s office in the past is now making its way into court.
“Perhaps he was hoping that his co-conspirators would help him get these weapons,” said Lt. Jim Gannon of the Homewood Police Department. “We do not know for certain that there is no way he could have carried this out, so we had to assume he could.”
Cook County prosecutors refused to give details, saying only the six kidnapping solicitation charges stem from the letter the youth sent last week to six classmates at Hart Middle School.
Prosecutors said the charge of solicitation to commit first-degree murder stemmed from another incident, but refused to elaborate.
The charges come as educators and law enforcement officials nationwide try to stave off a repeat of tragedies such as the March shootings outside a school in Jonesboro, Ark., and last week’s killings inside a school cafeteria in Springfield, Ore.
Already this week, police have arrested two teenagers in Delaware after they pointed what looked like a gun at fellow students and threatened to kill them. In Kansas, school officials called off classes for the rest of the week after rumors swirled that a student planned to bring a gun to school.
In the Chicago area, one DuPage County youth has been charged in connection with an alleged plot to gun down classmates as school let out for the day at Glenbard North High School and another was suspended.
In the Homewood case, school officials and police said they took the threat seriously from the moment they found the letter–even though some of the alleged threats sound like boyhood braggadocio.
The letter hinted at a possible motive: “I have been thinking after nearly a year of hell received from a group of girls that I will revolt.”
According to police, the youth’s letter talks about the need to gather weapons, including guns and explosives such as “water balloons filled with gasoline or another flammable substance.”
Spokesmen for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office would not comment on why prosecutors regarded the letter as more than an ill-advised prank. In a press release, the office said, “We filed these charges because they were appropriate and because we must move to avoid tragedies such as those that have afflicted too many American communities.”
Principal Dale Mitchell said the school would have taken the letter seriously in any instance, but that “this has rippled out a lot further than anyone could have expected.”
When he left the school last Friday, “we were handling things well. No one was shot, no one got injured. . . . some letters were written.”
But he was surprised to see news reports about the incident on television. “The difference isn’t school response, it’s media response and possibly parent response,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to see a lot of copying, where small items become news items.”
The investigation began last Thursday, when a teacher found the boy’s letter in her classroom. She gave it to administrators, who called in police.
The 7th grader was suspended Friday.
By Tuesday morning, police had questioned the four girls who were targeted for abduction and the six boys who received the letters. The six boys were not disciplined.
Charges were filed as the boy appeared in Juvenile Court early Wednesday.
Investigators say the letter discussed building a two-story barricade with at least four rooms: two cells, a place for “food preparation” and a room for “weapon storage and a medical kit.”
The note also suggests demanding $2.5 million for each hostage and calls for a meeting at the suspect’s home, providing a map.
Neither the boy’s family nor his lawyer could be reached for comment.
The youth, who was charged in a juvenile petition in Cook County Court, was being held Wednesday night at a Chicago hospital where he was undergoing a psychological evaluation, Homewood police said.
School officials described the boy as a good student who had never been in trouble.
Friends described him as shy and introverted, an accomplished writer who frequently wrote fantasy fiction.
The charges came as a relief to the mother of one girl who police said was targeted for abduction. The mother said she was pleased with the way school and law enforcement officials handled the incident.
The woman said she hoped the incident would send a message to other children. “Now kids have to be accountable for what they say,” she said.
