Police foil ‘Columbine-style’ massacre

AT 17-years-old, Jared Cano had been expelled from school and had several runs-in with the law, though none of the charges from burglary to drug possession had been pressed.

When Tampa police, who periodically checked on the teen because of his troubled past, were tipped off that Cano was plotting to bomb the school that had kicked him out a year earlier, they thought the information was plausible enough that they knocked on his apartment door and his mother let them search the place.

Cano had amassed shrapnel, plastic tubing, timing and fuse devices to make pipe bombs, all for a plot in which he intended to cause more casualties than the Columbine High School massacre, where 13 students were killed before the two student attackers killed themselves.

Police and the school system “were probably able to thwart a potentially catastrophic event, the likes of which the city of Tampa has not seen, and hopefully never will,” said Police Chief Jane Castor.

Before this week’s discovery, Cano had been arrested several times, most recently accused of breaking into a house and stealing a handgun, Tampa police said. He had a court-ordered curfew and was on a police watch list.

“We’ve been very, very familiar with him,” police Maj John Newman said.

Besides the bomb-making materials, officers said they also found a journal with schematic drawings of rooms inside Freedom High School and statements about Cano’s intent to kill specific administrators and any students who happened to be nearby on August 23. The plan was mapped out, minute-by-minute, Castor said.

His juvenile arrests included burglary, carrying a concealed weapon, altering serial numbers on a firearm, and drug possession. They all had been either dismissed or no action had been taken, beyond putting his name on the police watch list.

He also had a marijuana-growing operation, police said. On his Facebook page, he says he attends the “University of Marijuana,” where he is studying “how to grow weed”.

Cano faces charges of possessing bomb-making materials, cultivating marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, possessing marijuana and threatening to throw, project, place or discharge a destructive device. He was being held in a juvenile lockup in Tampa. The state attorney’s office will decide whether he will be charged as an adult.

His troubles at school ended with his expulsion in April 2010. Cano likely would have been “red-flagged” as soon as he stepped on campus and probably would not have been able to pull off his plan when classes start next week, said principal Chris Farkas.

Farkas said he is accustomed to all sorts of threats at a school of 2,100 students on a large campus in the northern suburbs. Still, he was spooked about what might have been. “Once I found out and saw the information and saw what was taken from the apartment complex, that was when the reality and the fear set in that this was a real situation.”

Castor declined to comment on Cano’s psychological state.

Cano tried to speak when he appeared before a judge, but was quickly hushed by a public defender standing beside him.

Cano will reappear in court on September 5.