Police: Teens with guns at school 'had no plans for mass destruction'

It was a potential recipe for disaster -- a carload of teenagers outside a North Las Vegas high school with semiautomatic weapons in their possession.

Two teenagers whom police described as a 16-year-old former Mojave High male student and a 16-year-old Mojave High female student, were arrested shortly before the start of classes Wednesday at the school at 5302 Goldfield St.

North Las Vegas and Clark County School District police say there apparently was no threat of an incident such as the April 20 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., that left 14 students -- including the two alleged killers -- and a teacher dead.

"There was nothing to indicate that this would be anything like Columbine," North Las Vegas Police Sgt. Michael Judd said. "School District Police observed them at the school in a stolen car, and they were arrested."

School District Police Sgt. Ken Young agreed: "It appears they had no plans for mass destruction."

Mojave High School officials did report receiving phone calls from concerned parents who saw the story on the news.

Four of the Mojave students in the car were released to their parents after police determined they merely had been given a ride to school by the two teens wanted in the theft of the 1998 Chevrolet and the kidnapping of the 43-year-old woman who owns the vehicle.

Judd said the incident began at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday in the 2300 block of Perliter Street, near Eastern and Owens avenues, after a woman got out of her car and approached her home only to be met by two teenagers. One put a gun to her head, the other a gun in her side, police said.

The teens then forced the woman back into the car and drove around with her for awhile before she was freed, investigators said, noting that she called police from the 2400 block of East Craig Road shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday.

Police put out a bulletin describing the stolen car. Two School District officers in a patrol car received the bulletin between 2 and 2:30 a.m. and spotted the vehicle in the school parking lot at about 7 a.m. and made the arrests.

Police said two semiautomatic handguns were found in the front passenger area of the car.

The teenagers were booked into the county's juvenile detention facility, each charged with robbery and kidnapping.

Police also are investigating a report of a burglary in Las Vegas that may have been related to the stolen car incident.

archive