Two teenage girls have been arrested on conspiracy to commit murder charges after police said they plotted for months to commit a shooting at a Southern California high school.
The teens, both 15 years old, planned to carry out the shooting at Corona High School, according to police in Corona, California, a city of about 160,000 residents in Riverside County, about 50 miles from downtown Los Angeles.
The Corona Police Department said that it first learned of the threat on Oct. 6 from the FBI, which identified concerning communications on social media about a possible school threat to Corona High School. The investigation led to the “immediate” arrest of one suspect, a student at Corona High School, police said in a statement on Oct. 20.
Police executed search warrants at several residences and identified a second 15-year-old suspect, a student at nearby Norco High School, the statement said. She was also arrested.
“The evidence obtained showed the two suspects had spent several months researching school shootings and how they could carry out a potential attack at Corona High School on an unspecified future date,” the police department said.
They also talked about how they would obtain weapons, but were unable to do so yet, police said. No weapons were found during searches.
Both teens face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and are in custody, police said. Their identities were not released.
Police, in their statement, did not reveal details about a potential motive, but Lt. Robert Montanez told ABC 7 that there was a list of names found and the target was clearly the high school campus.
“There is some indication that revenge played some role in this. If that’s the case, it’s extraordinarily unfortunate that it’s got to this point where these girls felt that this was their only avenue to deal with their problems,” Montanez told the outlet.
USA TODAY has reached out to the Corona Police Department, the FBI and the Corona Norco Unified School District for more information.
News of the arrests comes days after a 16-year-old shooting suspect in Oregon opened fire in a special education classroom at an elementary school, killing three young children and one teacher. It was the 28th mass killing of the year in the United States, of which 21 were shootings, according to James Alan Fox of the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Teen girls plotted for months to commit a school shooting, police say
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