Got this from the Fairbanks Daily News Miner
6 North Pole students jailed
By AMANDA BOHMAN, Staff Writer
NORTH POLE--Police arrested six seventh-graders Saturday on suspicion they hatched a detailed plot to take guns and knives into North Pole Middle School to kill students and staff last week.
The boys each face a charge of first-degree conspiracy to commit murder, a felony. Authorities did not release their names or ages.
"To what extent they could have executed the plan is anyone's guess," North Pole Mayor Jeff Jacobson said during a news conference Saturday at City Hall. Jacobson also teaches at the middle school.
North Pole Police Chief Paul Lindhag described elements of the plot:
The students planned to disable the school's telephone and power systems and set an allotted amount of time to kill their victims. Lindhag said the students planned an escape route from the school and from North Pole, a town of 1,600 people 13 miles south of Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway.
The boys intended to carry out the violence April 17 but pushed the plan back a day, according to police. Their motives included revenge for being picked on by other students as well as their dislike of staff members and students.
Officers from multiple law enforcement agencies served several search warrants in the course of the investigation, Lindhag said. He declined to discuss what evidence was gathered.
Lindhag would not comment on whether authorities found a hit list, which has been an element of the investigation and the focus of widespread rumors since police started the probe April 17.
A student who told a parent about the alleged plot prompted the call to police. Fifteen students were subsequently suspended for suspected involvement or knowledge of the plot. The school principal alerted parents of the situation in a letter sent home and posted on the school's Web site. Dogs swept the school Thursday to make sure it was clear of weapons. Some parents kept their children home from school.
Sixth- through eighth-graders attend the middle school, which has an enrollment of about 500 students and is located on 8th Avenue a few blocks from the community's main road.
The students who were suspended but not arrested will remain suspended as the police investigation continues, school principal Ernie Manzie said.
Shock, horror and sadness were among the reactions of Manzie and other officials, who said they were also relieved there was no violence. The school district has never faced a threat of violence this severe in its history.
"I'm as surprised as anyone," Lindhag said. "You don't want to think this will happen in your own hometown."
Manzie said he was saddened because the actions of the six suspects will cast a shadow on the school.
"There are so many good kids at North Pole Middle School and so many families who are supportive," he said.
A police presence that began at the school last week will continue through the end of the school year, Manzie said. The school has brought in an additional safety monitor and increased monitoring in common areas before and after school and in the cafeteria.
"We have quite a few safety measures in place already at other schools. Those will continue to be in place," said Lynda Sather, spokeswoman for the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District.
Charges against the six suspects were not filed by the time arraignments began Saturday and a clerk at the Rabinowitz Courthouse said she did not expect the youths to be arraigned until today.
They were taken to the Fairbanks Youth Facility, authorities said. State law allows for suspects older than 13 to be tried as adults after a waiver hearing, which determines whether a child has a possibility of rehabilitation.
Lindhag said police found no connection between the suspected plot and tragedies such as the Columbine High School killings, which happened April 20, 1999, when two students killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before killing themselves.
Vicki Kennon has a daughter in seventh grade at North Pole Middle School and belongs to the Parent Teacher Student Association.
"They did a good job. They acted very quickly," she said of the school district.
Like most parents, Kennon did not keep her daughter home from school but she did talk about the situation with her child.
"Trying to explain why is the toughest part," Kennon said. "In such a small community as North Pole, you don't want to think that things like this can happen."
Judith Kleinfeld, a University of Alaska Fairbanks professor of psychology, is studying the problems of boys and launched The Boys Project, an effort to determine why young men are increasingly less likely to be valedictorians, on the honor roll or active in organizations like student government.
Kleinfeld wondered about the background of the children accused of hatching the plot. Youth implicated in plots of violence at school typically came from caring families, she said.
Manzie declined to release personal information about the boys, citing school district confidentiality policies.
"It's hard to believe we have a Columbine situation here," Kleinfeld said.
Mike Hopper, who counsels boys at the Fairbanks Youth Facility, said he thinks young people in today's society are over-stimulated by sex and violence in the media.
"We all live in this great big media age, but it will be another 20 years before we know what it does to growing minds," Hopper said. "There is a definite kind of contagion when it comes to self-destructive behavior. I've seen it a million times."
Reporter Amanda Bohman can be reached at abohman@newsminer.com or 459-7544
We are so far removed from the Lower 48 that we kind of felt immune from this here in the land of Santa Clause.
