Police arrest middle school student suspected of planning shooting

Scott Sonner

Friday, May 21, 1999 | 9:12 a.m.

SPARKS, Nev. - A 13-year-old student says he was only joking when he told classmates he planned a shooting spree during a fire drill at his middle school, but police arrested him anyway.

The boy's father voluntarily turned over two or three rifles to the Sparks Police Department on Thursday and the youth was being held at a juvenile corrections center on a charge of making threats, police said.

County school police took the seventh-grader into custody shortly after classes began Thursday at Dilworth Middle School, said Detective Mike Mieras of the Washoe County School Police Department in neighboring Reno.

He said it's possible the boy was indeed joking, but that the school district is taking all threats seriously.

Two other students were arrested at the same school later Thursday for allegedly making threats against the school. But school officials said those arrests were not related to the first boy. No details were immediately available on those arrests.

The school police force for Reno-Sparks and the surrounding county has investigated about 50 threats of some sort since the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado a month ago, Mieras said.

No weapons were found at the school on Thursday, Washoe County School Superintendent James Hager said.

"The Sparks Police Department went to this youngster's home and they did find some weapons," Hager told KRNV-TV.

Police started acting about 6:45 a.m. Thursday on a tip to a police hotline that the suspect planned to open fire on students as they left the school building for a fire drill.

They questioned friends and then the suspect directly. He admitted he originally told others he planned to bring a toy squirt gun and smoke bombs to light off in the school during the fire drill, Det. Mieras said.

He then changed the story to say, "I'm going to get a 17-year-old friend and as kids come out, we're going to start shooting at them," Mieras said.

"And then he said, 'I was just joking around,"' the detective said.

"I told him that unfortunately you may say you are joking and I pretty much believe you are joking, but we've followed up on any threat the last three or four weeks and we take every one seriously.

"And we took him into custody," Mieras said.

Mieras said the boy's father was supportive of the move.

"He said, 'You know, I can sit here and say he would never do anything like this, but I understand your position. He needs to face punishment for his actions,"' Mieras quoted the father as saying.

"The father voluntarily turned over the weapons to Sparks police for safe-keeping," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Sparks Police Department referred all inquiries to the school district. The boy was expected to remain at Wittenberg Hall until a hearing on the misdemeanor charge expected as early as Friday.

Thursday morning, a boy upset over a broken romance shot and wounded six students at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga. He was quickly arrested.