Derek Shrout, a 17-year-old student from Russell County, Ala., was arraigned after being arrested for a plot to attack fellow students at his high school. ABC News reported on Monday that the arraignment came after Shrout was arrested on Friday after a teacher at the school found a teen’s journal which included plans to kill six students and one teacher with homemade grenades. Officials discovered that six of the seven who were listed in the journal was black and the one individual who was not black was believed to be gay by Shrout who proclaimed himself a white supremacist.
Police believe the attempted attack to be a hate crime and also discovered that Shrout started writing in his journal three days after the tragic shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said that the journal contained plans that looked like potential terrorist attacks and “attacks of violence and danger on the school."
After speaking to Shrout, police discovered that the teen learned how to make the devices on the Internet and he also admitted to not having much interaction with the people he is accused of targeting.
The news of the attempted attack has taken students at Russell County High School by surprised.
One student at Russell County said he didn’t think anything like this could happen in Russell County.
“I thought maybe that’s just something that happens everywhere else.”
But as evident with what happened just a few weeks ago in Newtown, Conn., these attacks and attempted attacks are hitting close to home for many citizens and are happening to regularly.
There is no mention of what officials believe to be the deeper motive behind the attempt, but after a raid of Shrout’s home, police did discover dozens of empty tobacco tins filled with shrapnel but the teen had not obtained gunpowder, fuses or a substance to ignite the devices with.
Shrout claimed that the plans uncovered by the police was just a work of fiction and pleaded not guilty.
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