Teen Accused of Using Web to Threaten Mass. Students

BOSTON — Officials say a 19-year-old quadriplegic from Missouri used an Internet chat room to make “Columbine-like” threats to hurt students and teachers at a Massachusetts middle school.

Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Tom Reilly said Saturday that the paralyzed teen, whose name and hometown were not released, made the threats using an America Online chat room frequented by dozens of eighth-graders from Townsend’s Hawthorne Brook Middle School.

Authorities confiscated the Missouri teenager’s computer Friday and plan to charge him with making threats and possibly other charges Monday, Reilly said.

He said the teenager had been chatting online with the Townsend students since September, but midweek the cyberrelationship turned terrifying. Reilly said the man told several students he was in their community and he threatened to hurt them, their teachers and their school.

The threats, which included a list of teachers and students to be targeted, was an act of “cyber-terrorism” that left the school shaken. It may have been a hoax, but “the fear that was expressed by students, parents and teachers in this community was very real,” Reilly said.

Reilly said the students had thought the Missouri teenager was a peer and included him in their conversations, revealing information about their town, their school and themselves.

When the man allegedly directed some students to child pornography Web sites a few days ago, some of the children told their parents, who then called police.

Townsend school Supt. James McCormick said someone from the community also received a suspicious phone call that made references to the April 20 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in which two students fatally shot 12 fellow students, a teacher and themselves.

Bomb-sniffing dogs searched the middle school Thursday, and students’ bags and backpacks were checked, but nothing suspicious was found and the school was declared safe, McCormick said.

On Friday, authorities converged on the suspect’s home, where he lives with his parents, and confiscated his computer equipment.