Kansas teens charged in Columbine-like plot

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas - Kansas officials filed charges on Monday against five small-town high school students who are accused of threatening an attack on their school similar to a deadly assault in Columbine, Colorado, seven years ago.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline said that Coy New, 18, Caleb Byrd, 16, Robby Hunt, 17, Andrew Jaeger, 15, and James Tillman, 16, were each charged in Cherokee County District Court with one count of incitement to riot and one count of criminal threat.

The boys allegedly had been plotting to kill fellow students at Riverton High School in southeast Kansas in the style of the massacre by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who shot dead 13 people and then killed themselves at Columbine High School in 1999.

Officials have said investigators discovered guns and knives in the home of one of the suspects, and information obtained from online correspondence indicated the suspects had at least a dozen people targeted for murder.

Kansas school officials learned of the plot after being alerted to a message left on the website MySpace.com last week.

If convicted, the boys each face seven to 23 months in prison and a fine of US$100,000 on the riot charge and five to 17 months in prison and a fine of US$100,000 on the charges of criminal threat.

- REUTERS