Two teenagers planned to blow up their school in a massacre timed to coincide with the anniversary of a killing spree at a US school, a court has heard.
Matthew Swift, 18, and his friend, Ross McKnight, 16, of Denton, Greater Manchester, deny conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions. Manchester Crown Court heard they plotted to blow up Audenshaw School 10 years after the Columbine tragedy.
A teacher and 12 students died at a school in Columbine, Colorado, in 1999. The court heard the pair became obsessed with the massacre at Columbine High School on 20 April 1999, and wanted to emulate the actions of the two killers - Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.
Their two targets were the shopping complex, Crown Point North, and Audenshaw School, where Mr McKnight was still a student and Mr Swift a former pupil, the court heard. The pair were arrested in March.
Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said to the jury: "It is the prosecution case that these two young men sat in the dock had planned to copy and emulate the actions of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, here in the UK." The court heard Mr McKnight and Mr Swift had agreed to detonate a bomb at Crown Point North as a diversion before driving to their school, murdering teachers and pupils and then killing themselves.
Mr Wright said they were also fascinated by the Oklahoma city bombings, carried out by Timothy McVeigh in 1995, which resulted in the deaths of 168 people and injuries to 450 others. Mr McKnight wrote an essay about a massacre at a school in Audenshaw in which ten people died and hundreds were hurt. Mr Wright said: "The 10 people (were) killed by the one person who had some sort of grudge against the school or some sort of grudge against people who went to school.
"The evidence, you may think, this was not a piece of creative writing, this was an explanation of the state of mind of that young man." Eighteen months after the essay was written, Mr McKnight rang a friend when he was drunk to tell her he loved her and that "he couldn't wait until April 20 - the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre".
The jury also heard the defendants wanted to adopt the personas of the Columbine killers by using their nicknames or alter-egos.
Entries from Mr McKnight's diary included talk of "Project Rainbow's" official start day in November 2007. In the diary he spoke of the "greatest massacre ever" and killing thousands of people. "We will walk into school and at the end of it no one will walk out alive... after we have finished in Audenshaw we will have to kill ourselves there and then."
Mr Swift had been given an "exclusion order" banning him from Crown Point, which sparked his resentment, the jury was told. After police arrested Mr Swift they found a manual with instructions on ingredients to use in explosives. The trial continues.
Source: bbc
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