A Roy High School student accused of planning to bomb the school was so "fascinated" with the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School that police say he traveled to Colorado to interview the principal there about the tragic event.
But when officers interviewing the 16-year-old boy compared him to the two Columbine students who killed 12 and injured nearly two dozen others, the teen was "offended," according to documents filed this week in 2nd District Court.
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Dallin Todd Morgan is scheduled to appear in 2nd District Court on Feb. 1. No charges have been filed against his 16-year-old alleged co-conspirator, whom prosecutors could seek to try as an adult if he is charged with a felony. |
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"[He] was offended by the fact that those killers only completed one percent of their plan and he was much more intelligent than that," a Roy investigator wrote in an affidavit. "[He] explained to me that he could complete his plan due to how intelligent he is."
Two days after police arrested 18-year-old Dallin Todd Morgan and a 16-year-old senior for the alleged bomb plot, which was to end with stealing an airplane and flying to freedom, Roy Police Chief Greg Whinham said investigators are still trying to determine how viable the plan was.
The 16-year-old suspect told police he had experience making a pipe bomb using "gun powder and rocket fuel" and that Morgan had three guns in his home, according to court documents. Police said they found no explosive materials while serving search warrants.
Prosecutors on Friday charged Morgan with a single count of first-degree felony possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Court officials said no felony-level charges had been filed in juvenile court against the 16-year-old as of late Friday afternoon. The boy remains in a juvenile detention center after a morning hearing was held to determine if he should be released, Whinham said.
Frank DeAngelis, the principal at Columbine for the past 16 years, said the 16-year-old struck him as "articulate" when they met for an interview Dec. 12, but that nothing in the half-hour conversation caused him alarm.
"You do look for questions and red flags and things of that nature ... just because of everything I’ve been through," DeAngelis told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday. "That’s the thing that was so shocking when I got the call Wednesday from Utah police. There was nothing that stood out in my mind about the interview because it was so similar to interviews I had done before."
DeAngelis said for years he has received multiple requests each week from students looking to interview him about the infamous shootings. During his interview with the Roy teen, DeAngelis said the two discussed how the school has coped in the years since the event and what programs are now in place to prevent another attack.
Police say Morgan and the 16-year-old classmate seemed to be average students, but had been planning for months to set off an explosive during a school assembly to get "revenge on the world."
In the affidavit, Roy police detailed a number of text messages allegedly sent by the 16-year-old suspect to other students. Those messages include:
• "If I tell you one day not to go to school, make damn sure you and your brother are not there."
• "Dallin is in on it. He wants revenge on the world too. ... We both want to, and we have a plan to get away with it too."
• "Another reason is that I just don’t care. I’m pretty much a lying cheating manipulator with everyone except seven people. Everyone else is just a piece."
A student at the school alerted police after receiving a message from the 16-year-old suspect. The Tribune generally does not name juveniles suspected of criminal activity.
On Friday, DeAngelis called the teen who came forward to police with concerns about the suspect’s messages "a hero."
"She stopped a potential tragedy," he said. "Our thoughts are with [the school]. We identify. It’s just so fortunate that it was stopped."
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