Girls, 13 and 14, Held for Columbine-Style 'Hit List'

Two southeast Michigan middle school girls are in the custody of juvenile authorities after allegedly creating a Columbine-like “hit list” targeting 31 students and seven teachers, according to court documents.

The two students, ages 13 and 14, told authorities at Anderson Middle School in Berkley they were “joking around,” The Detroit News reports. Another student saw the detailed plans in a notebook belonging to one of the girls and turned it into school authorities.

According to Oakland County Circuit Court records, the alleged plan threatened a school shooting “in the near future.”

“... The plan detailed a map of the gym, waiting for the students to be at an assembly and also bringing in small guns in backpacks while trying to overtake the office and staff, and then taking out the people who have wronged them,” Berkley Detective Sgt. Andrew Hadfield wrote in a petition asking for juvenile delinquency proceedings against the two girls.

“She initially said it was a joke but had gone (through) a lot of planning,” he wrote.

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Hadfield said both girls admitted to knowing about the plan, and one of them had planned to get weapons from her father after recently watching YouTube videos about the Columbine school shooting in Colorado in 1999, where 15 people died and 21 people were injured.

“(She) thought this would be a good way to deal with the kids bothering her,” the petition reads.

Both girls are being held at Children’s Village without bail. They are scheduled to appear at a June 8 pretrial hearing before Judge Cheryl Matthews on charges of threatening to commit an act of terrorism and making a false report to another person.

The girls, both of whom have clean records, are being prosecuted as juveniles and could be held in a juvenile facility up to their 19th birthdays. If they were prosecuted as adults on felony charges, they could face up to 20 years in prison.