'Potential tragedy' averted: 3 Florida teens arrested after texts expose school shooting plan, police say

The arrest of three Florida teenagers last week may have prevented an attack on a high school where the suspects had identified potential targets and acquired aerial photos of the campus to map out their plot, authorities said.

Text messages that the boys exchanged revealed the identities of other students who the teenagers planned to target in their attack at Creekside High School in the Jacksonville suburb of St. Johns, according to the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office. Deputies reportedly discovered that the texts included the encircled photographs of the intended targets, as well as their class schedules and home addresses.

The trio also sent one another aerial photographs of the high school, according arrest reports provided Tuesday to USA TODAY.

All three of the students — two 14-year-old boys and a 15-year-old boy — were arrested Thursday and each were charged with two felony counts related to accusations regarding their written threats and also that they had unlawfully used communications devices. USA TODAY does not identify juveniles charged with crimes.

“Nothing is more important to me than the safety of our children," St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick said in a statement on Facebook. "I am proud of the youth services deputies assigned to this investigation, who acted quickly on the information that was provided and prevented a potential tragedy."

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Boys formed a 'communist' club after being bullied, reports state

After being bullied, the students had formed what deputies described in the arrest reports as a "Russian communist group" that they named "the United Boyopolis Socialist Republic."

The group created a logo that they placed on a patch as an identifying insignia and distributed applications to recruit other members into their organization, arrest reports state.

Not long after, the teens began formulating a plan to attack the school in multiple conversations in a group text messaging chat, where they also discussed the potential use of weapons, according to the arrest reports.

One conversation between the charged trio and another unnamed individual contained both a "hit list" of students they wanted to hurt and a "lethal hit list" of students they wanted to kill, according to the reports.

One of the charged students was accused of sending a text in the chat saying "I'm nothing without a weapon." In another exchange, one of the students said "I'm bringing my AK-47 tomorrow," prompting one of the accused to respond: "me too."

The students made it clear in the exchanges that the plan "was not a joke," which prompted the unnamed member of the group chat to become "concerned and fearful enough" to report it to school officials, deputies wrote in the reports.

Deputies with the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office were notified Sept. 29 about the texts and launched an investigation, obtaining and examining two of the suspects' phones, Lt. George Harrigan, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, told USA TODAY.

Harrigan said Tuesday that it remains "undetermined" whether the teens had access to any of the weapons they discussed to carry out their attack. The investigation remains ongoing.

All three students were suspended effective last Tuesday, Harrigan said.

St. Johns County School District Superintendent Tim Forson said in a statement to USA Today that the district will continue cooperating with the investigation and that officials have not ruled out expulsion for the three students.

"We encourage students to speak up if they see something that concerns them, and this situation is a perfect example," Forson said in the statement. "As the (sheriff's office) continues their investigation and any subsequent criminal proceedings, we will begin applying consequences."

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Foiled plot comes as school shootings on the rise

The potentially foiled plot comes as school shootings rise nationally and as gun violence rages in the Jacksonville area, where shootings have recently left 20 people injured and seven dead in a five-day period.

In late August, a 21-year-old man entered a Jacksonville Dollar General wielding a rifle emblazoned with a swastika, where he fatally shot three Black people in a racist attack before turning the gun on himself.

Just last week, two people opened fire during a dispute between two groups at Morgan State University homecoming events in Baltimore, Maryland, wounding five people who authorities do not believe were the intended targets of the shooters.

Unfolding on a university campus, the shooting was at the time the latest to take place in an academic setting.

Shootings with casualties at public and private elementary schools more than doubled in the 2021-22 academic year, which marked the second year in a row that school shootings in the U.S. hit a record high. Of the 188 shootings at American elementary schools, 57 included fatalities, according to the most recent federal data.

Last year’s figure of 93 school shootings was the highest in two decades.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Florida students had 'hit list' in high school shooting plans: Police