What Were They Thinking?

By Flora Tartakovsky

Last Friday was supposed to be the day of South High School's big homecoming game and dance. Instead, the Cleveland school was shut down, guarded by police and surrounded by anxious questions. School authorities had uncovered what they described as a possibly racist plot by a group of about a dozen white students who had threatened an armed assault like the one in Littleton, Colo. Police arrested four boys, one 14 and three 15, who authorities said had made plans to go on a killing spree last Friday at the mostly black urban school. The assault was to end in a suicidal shoot-out with police, which one of the shooters was supposed to survive to "bask in the glory," a friend told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A suspect's mother said police told her they had found a school map with X marks on it, suggesting an assault plan. Police seized two guns at a suspect's home and said they believed the boys had planned to get more weapons from a street gang.

The alleged plot surfaced on Wednesday when school officials were tipped off by the mother of a student who had heard about it from classmates. On Thursday morning the suspects, and those thought to know about their plans, were interviewed, and their parents were brought in. The four arrested youths were charged with such offenses as inciting violence, aggravated menacing and ethnic intimidation. One was also charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated murder; another checked into a medical center for psychiatric evaluation. All told, 11 students were suspended. At a press conference on Friday, Cleveland Mayor Michael White said, "There is going to be a zero tolerance to any child bringing violence into a school." Parents and lawyers for the suspects contended that authorities were overreacting to teenage boasting and misunderstandings. Dan Shields, an attorney for two of the suspended students, told CNN that one of them had a map of South High only because he was a new student, "and that's what is now being turned into this map and this plot thing."

Authorities and students described the suspects as fitting the now familiar stereotype of alienated teens. "They were known as the stoner types," says Melissa Oliver, 17, a white senior at the school. "They would wear clown makeup all over their eyes, dog collars and big old dirty pants. They were all white; they were loner types."

Sarah Jedd, 15, a friend of some of the suspects, says they were made fun of and that they vowed to shoot anyone who got in their way during the rampage. Yet Jedd's mother Debra recalls that when the suspects visited, they were well-mannered kids who liked to listen to the rock group Korn and play video games. "If I didn't think they were good kids, they wouldn't have been allowed in my home," she says.

South High was scheduled to reopen Monday, with students to be greeted by police wielding metal detectors. But that's not the worst of the fallout for students like Melissa Oliver. She had her hair done in ringlets and bought a glittery blue dress to wear to the homecoming dance--and that hasn't been rescheduled.

--By Flora Tartakovsky. With reporting by Ken Myers and Elaine Rivera/Cleveland

With reporting by Ken Myers and Elaine Rivera/Cleveland