A teenager from southern Utah who was accused of raising a homemade Islamic State group flag in place of an American flag and lighting an explosive device at school was charged on Monday.
Washington County prosecutors filed one first-degree-felony charge each of attempted murder and possession of a weapon of mass destruction. The 16-year-old was also charged with graffiti, a class A misdemeanor, and abuse of the flag, a class B misdemeanor.
On Feb. 15, officials found what appeared to be support for the Islamic State group at Hurricane High School.
Someone had flown a black flag, with white painted-on Islamic State lettering, and wrote “ISIS is comi” in red spray paint on a cinder block wall of the school. The school’s U.S. flag was cut up and left on a bench next to the flagpole.
At the time, officials believed it was a prank.
Two weeks later, on March 5, a 16-year-old went to school with two backpacks, according to court documents.
One of the backpacks contained a metal soup can filled with BB shots that were removed from their shells, an improvised fuse, gunpowder, matches, three 17 ounce bottles of gasoline, and JROTC clothing.
Surveillance footage showed the 16-year-old — wearing a Pine View Panthers JROTC patch and a green military style hat — waiting in the lunch line at the cafeteria, court documents state.
After he got his lunch, he took both of his backpacks to the middle of the cafeteria, where he sat down, alone.
After a few minutes, he got back up and went to the hallway, where he walked in a circle, then back into the cafeteria, to the vending machines.
He leaned a black-and blue-backpack against the vending machine, lit a fuse , and walked away.
Between 75-150 students were in the cafeteria at the time, court documents state.
Several students noticed the smoking backpack.
The fire had fizzled out by the time the school’s principal and resource officers arrived.
The officer looked through the backpack, then took it off campus. The school was evacuated.
The teenager was arrested that night and, according to court documents, admitted to lighting the fuse in the backpack. Police seized evidence from the teenager’s home that was consistent with the material in the explosive device.
He also admitted to flying the Islamic State group’s flag at Hurricane High School. He made the flag out of materials he found at his grandparents’ shop, he said. He had covered his face, sneaked out of his house and rode his brother’s bike to the school, he said.
The teenager attends a class at Pine View High School, but he is a resident of Hurricane and goes to Hurricane High School, police confirmed.
After telling detectives how he made the device, the officers asked whether he intended to hurt anybody.
“‘Kind of a little bit. If someone got hurt, I probably wouldn’t care,’ ” he reportedly told them. “He then said, ’fun kind of thing,’” court documents continue.
“The way life is going; it’s not going well. There’s a bunch of bad people; I don’t like the way the world is going. I just wanted to do something to make it different,” he told detectives, according to court documents.
A detective asked: “What have they done to you?”
“Probably nothing; I don’t really see death as bad; it’s a new kind of way of life,” he reportedly responded.
If he hadn’t gotten caught, he said he would have laid low, tried to hang an Islamic State group flag at the school or on the freeway and try to contact the terrorist group.
“But I don’t really know how to do that,” he reportedly said. “I need to do more research on that.”
