Samaritan Helps Foil Columbine-Style Shooting

July 13, 2007— -- A full-scale, Columbine-style school massacre may have been averted today when police arrested two Long Island teenagers on suspicion that they planned to unleash gunfire and detonate explosions inside a local high school.

The arrests were made after a mystery Samaritan gave law enforcement officials a handwritten journal that detailed plans to attack Long Island's Connetquot High School in the Suffolk County town of Bohemia.

The journal was found in a McDonald's parking lot a week ago and named specific students as targets.

"I will start a chain of terrorism in the world," the journal read, according to Richard Dormer, the Suffolk County police commissioner, who shared disturbing excerpts at an afternoon press conference.

"Take everyone down, turn the guns on the cop, take out myself," Dormer read. "Perfecto."

An unidentified woman found the spiral notebook and turned it in to high school officials, who delivered it to authorities.

Police said one of the alleged conspirators, a 15-year-old male Connetquot student, admitted to Suffolk County officials that he wrote the journal. The student was already serving a long-term suspension because of threatening behavior.

The 15-year-old, whose identity was withheld because he is a minor, and alleged accomplice Michael McDonough, 17, are in custody on charges of conspiring to injure students and staff at the high school.

McDonough attended a different school but worked with the 15-year-old at the Long Island McDonald's location where the journal was discovered, authorities said.

Using a search warrant, police seized the 15-year-old's computer and discovered that he had made numerous attempts and inquiries online about buying weapons -- including an Uzi automatic rifle and an AK-47 assault rifle. Authorities said he had also attempted to purchase five pounds of black powder explosives.

Police said they discovered at least one videotape that featured a close-up of the 15-year-old as he explained what he wanted to do at the school. While he was not carrying any weapon in the footage, Dormer said he was very explicit about the bloodshed he wanted to spark.

"He felt that everyone was against him, the world was against him and he was very upset with life in general and the world in general," Dormer said.