SWAT takes guns, arrests boy, 13, who threatened shooting

A SWAT team in Washington state on Saturday arrested a 13-year-old boy over the weekend who threatened to kill himself and showed school shooter ideations, Pierce County Sheriff’s Deputy Carla Cappetto said Monday. Officials confirmed the boy’s previous claims that he had access to weapons, and removed 23 firearms from his home with several ammunition boxes, she said. Many of the guns were unsecured throughout the house and freely accessible to the boy, Cappetto noted. The suspect, who was not publicly identified, had everything necessary to commit a mass shooting, and it was only a matter of time before he did so, she added.

How do they know he would have committed a school shooting? Evidence from the boy’s bedroom suggested he was obsessed with past school shooters, Cappetto said. Officials confiscated loaded magazines with school shooter writings on them, along with clothes and other writings supporting the average mass shooting scenario, according to the sheriff’s office’s initial statement on Saturday. The boy’s intended target was unclear, officials said. Education records show the boy was unenrolled from a district south of Tacoma in 2021 and has not been recorded as an active student in any district since. The minor suspect was taken into custody and booked at the juvenile facility without incident, the release said.

The youth pleaded not guilty in court on Tuesday to charges of threatening to bomb or injure property, as well as various firearms charges. The boy’s parents spoke to local news outlet KOMO-TV after the plea and insisted their son’s threatening comments were blown out of proportion. The boy is a good kid who only made the concerning comments to seem cool, the parents said.

Dig deeper: Read Lauren Canterberry’s report on how Washington officials thwarted another mass shooting in June.