Teenage boys planned to 'kill everyone' at Yorkshire school in Columbine-style gun and bomb massacre, court hears

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Two teenage boys planned to “kill everyone” at their Yorkshire school in a Columbine-style massacre using bombs and guns, a court has heard.

The defendants, who cannot be named because of their age, were 14 when they were arrested by counter-terror police over the alleged plot in the town of Northallerton.

The older boy graphically described his ambitions in a diary that showed his love of mass murderers including the Columbine High School shooters and Charles Manson, Leeds Crown Court heard.

“F***, I hate my school. I will obliterate it. I will kill everyone,” he allegedly wrote in October. “I have a plan, a great f***ing plan.”

The document said the boy would “lay low” in Catterick before murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents and stealing her father’s guns, the court heard.

“I’ll make some explosives then well find a way back to Northallerton and well begin our assault on that f****** school,” it continued.

The document, written when the boy was 14, allegedly said: “I just want to kill every single one of you f***ers.

"Everyone is filthy and deserve to be shot, including me. I’ll play the role of god and decide who a let live and die. Humans are a vile species which needs to die out.”

The court heard one entry ended: “Sorry if this is found I have committed one of the worst atrocities in British history or I killed myself.”

The younger boy confessed part of the plan to school staff and police but the court heard investigators did not respond to the threat until a specialist counter-terror unit took over the probe and arrested the boys.

Prosecutor Paul Greaney QC said a hideout was found in Catterick Garrison that contained "various items, including materials that were capable of being used in bomb-making".

"This was no teenage fantasy; it was real,” he added. “They intended a re-enactment of the Columbine High School Massacre although fortunately, in the result, they were stopped before their plans were put into action.”

He told the jury the boys hero-worshipped Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - the teenagers who killed 12 students and a teacher in Colorado in 1999 using 99 explosive devices, firebombs, car bombs and guns that they eventually turned on themselves.

The suspects, now both 15, allegedly emulated the Columbine killers' habit of wearing trench coats and shared a list of people they wanted dead.

"In that attack, they intended to shoot and kill other pupils and teachers against whom they held a grievance,” Mr Greaney said.

"They also, like their heroes, intended to deploy explosives and researched bombing-making techniques to that end."

One of the defendants was wearing school uniform as the trial opened on Thursday, with both boys sitting with one of their parents as they listened.

Both deny conspiracy to murder, with the younger suspect claiming his friend “was serious about the mass killing”, whereas he was not, but the older one maintaining that “no-one was serious about any of it”.

The older boy also pleaded not guilty to unlawfully wounding his girlfriend and the aggravated burglary of her parents' house.

Prosecutors said the pair started a relationship in June last year and he later carved his name into her lower back.

The girl’s father had a store of seven shotguns in a locked cabinet, but the boy allegedly asked about them regularly and “sought access to them as part of the plan to attack the school”.

After the girl's parents banned the pair from seeing each other, the teenager went to her house “dressed like Eric Harris and wearing a T-shirt on which he had written a slogan in pen that was a threat…to her parents,” Mr Greaney said.

He allegedly fled carrying a large knife that was later found with the word "Love" written on the blade.

The trial continues and is expected to last four weeks.

Additional reporting by PA