Tonight:
4°c
Teenagers 'plotted Columbine-style massacre at school'
2 Sep 2009Two teenagers plotted a Columbine-style massacre of pupils and teachers at their school before killing themselves, a court heard today.
Matthew Swift, 18, and his friend Ross McKnight, 16, both from Denton, Greater Manchester, were to bomb a shopping centre and then go on a killing spree at Audenshaw High School, Manchester crown court heard.
Swift was an ex-pupil while McKnight still attended the school.
Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said the pair had plotted the massacre, fantasised about the killing spree and agreed to copy the Columbine school atrocity. In April 1999 Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 12 students and a teacher.
Mr Wright said: “These two young men had planned to copy and emulate the actions of Harris and Klebold.”
Mr Wright said the “impressionable” boys were not only fascinated by the Columbine massacre but by the 2005 Oklahoma city bombings, which killed 168 people.
McKnight even wrote an essay about the event and downloaded online material about it. He also wrote an essay about a massacre at a school entitled Equations of the Mind.
Mr Wright said of the essay: “It's in respect of... a massacre in Audenshaw, at a school in which hundreds were injured and 10 were killed.” He said a school staff member described it as “interesting and unusual”.
Both defendants deny one count of conspiracy to commit murder and one count of conspiracy to cause explosions between 11 November 2007 and 15 March this year.
The trial continues.
