US: Teenager jailed for planning school attack

An 18-year-old man suspected of plotting a murder spree at a high school in southern California was sentenced to five years in state prison.

Johnny Alvarez Casas pleaded no contest last month to conspiracy to commit a crime and possession of bomb-making ingredients.

He was sentenced yesterday.

Casas was a student at Quartz Hill High School in the Antelope Valley, 60 miles north of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said that Casas and another former student, now 17, confessed that they planned to attack the school on Valentine’s Day 2006, planting home-made bombs and shooting students who had made fun of their goth attire.

Casas’ attorney has said the teens were intimidated into making false confessions by authorities who overreacted out of fear of a Columbine High School-style attack – a reference to the 1999 murder of 12 students and a teacher in Littleton, Colorado, by two boys who then killed themselves.

Casas and the other student were arrested a year ago after a 16-year-old girl told an assistant principal she heard they were planning to cut off her arms and legs.