Oklahoma Student Nabbed in School-Shooting Plot

The morning of one school shooting, another may have been averted: Police arrested a teenager in northern Oklahoma yesterday for allegedly planning a Columbine-style attack on his high school. Authorities say 18-year-old Sammie Chavez tried to recruit students at Bartlesville High School's cafeteria this week for the massive gun-and-bomb plot, the Tulsa World reports. Chavez wanted "to lure students into the school auditorium where he planned to begin shooting them after chaining the doors shut," police wrote in a court affidavit.

And if recruits failed to follow orders, "he would not hesitate to kill them and/or himself," police added. The alleged plan included planting bombs by the auditorium doors and setting them off when police showed up. Chavez was already practicing with a Colt .45, police said, and using school computers to research a .22-caliber rifle mounted on a machine gun platform. He was also seen reading up on the Columbine massacre and researching pipe bombs online. Police arrested Chavez yesterday morning and his bail was set at $1 million. (More school shooting stories.)