Legal News

High School Student Charged With Attempting to Use a WMD

By Dan Slater

“The kid needs help, but this is a violent offense,” said Jay Hodge. “You can’t put an entire community in fear and just walk away. In this situation, society requires jail time. There’s no way to excuse or forgive what he did.”

Hodge, a prosecutor in Chesterfield, a small town in northeastern South Carolina, was referring to 18 year-old Ryan Schallenberger, who stands accused of planning to bomb his high school. The charges: attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a possible a life sentence, and two other federal counts. Click here and here for AP reports (via the NYT). Schallenberger (pictured) was arrested on state charges Saturday after his parents called the police because he had ordered 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer used in bombs, from eBay. He also faces state charges.

Prosecutor Hodge said investigators found an attack timeline in Schallenberger’s journal. The entry, according to reports, included how he would lock his school’s doors and where he would place more than five explosives in the building. According to reports, the journal also contained a hand-drawn map of the school and praise for the Columbine killers. Police say they also found an audiotape that was to have been played after Schallenberger died.

According to the AP report, after the state hearing, one of Schallenberger’s classmates, Hanna Huntley, disputed the idea that Schallenberger was a loner, and recounted how the teen made students laugh by singing songs from the cartoon ”SpongeBob SquarePants.”

”He had plenty of friends,” Huntley said. ”He was a likable person. He was the type of person that, if you weren’t happy that day, he’d make you smile. That’s why it was such a shock. He obviously kept all this bottled up.”

A possible life sentence? LB readers, let us know what you think.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).