Teacher turned teen’s journal over to police
By Bob Johnson
Associated Press
PHENIX CITY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama teenager who described himself as a white supremacist made journal entries about a plot to bomb classmates three days after the Newtown school massacre and began building small homemade explosives, a sheriff said Monday.
Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor told The Associated Press that he believed the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary was a factor because the first date in the boy’s journal describing the plan was Dec. 17 — three days after the Connecticut killings.
Seventeen-year-old Derek Shrout is charged with attempted assault after authorities say he planned to use homemade explosives to attack fellow students at Russell County High School.
Taylor said the boy told investigators that he’s a white supremacist and five of the six students he named in his journal are black. The journal was found by a teacher, who then turned it over to authorities.
A search of Shrout’s home found several small tobacco cans and two large cans, all with holes drilled in them and containing pellets, according to authorities. Taylor said all they needed were black powder and fuses to become explosives. The journal also allegedly mentioned using firearms.
“He just talks about some students, he specifically named six students and one faculty member and he talked about weapons and the amounts of ammunition for each weapon that he would use if he attacked the school,” Taylor said.
The sheriff said he didn’t believe the teen’s initial claim that the journal was a work of fiction.
“When you go to his house and you start finding the actual devices that he talked about being made, no, it’s not fiction anymore,” Taylor said. “Those devices were — all they needed was the black powder and the fuse — he had put a lot of time and thought into that.”
The teen, who is thin and wears glasses, said little during an initial court appearance Monday. District Judge David Johnson set bond at $75,000 and the teen’s family posted bond Monday night and he was released.
The judge ordered the teen not to contact anyone at his school, students or teachers, and not to use the Internet without parental supervision. He also must wear an ankle monitoring device.
His attorney, Jeremy Armstrong, declined to discuss specifics of the case, but he did say that the talk of the case he has heard so far was “blown a little out of proportion.”
Some of Shrout’s classmates confirmed his interest in white supremacy.
David Kelly, the senior class president, told WTVM-TV that he was Shrout’s battalion commander in JROTC.
“At first through JROTC, he was confident, well-rounded, but as time went by, he was doing the whole white power thing,” Kelly told the station.
