A 16-year-old boy was arrested after he plotted to carry out a mass shooting and a bombing at a high school in Berkeley, Ca. Acting on a tip, police foiled a plot to attack Berkeley High School at a time when the nation was already on edge after shootings at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery and a Uvalde, Tx., elementary school, the Wall Street Journal reports. The boy, whom the police didn’t identify, was arrested on Memorial Day after the police discovered assault rifles, knives and explosives at his home. The police also found “electronic items” that officers said could help make more weapons. “There’s a number of things about this arrest that have felt particularly concerning,” said Brent Stephens, superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District.
Stephens declined to say if the boy was a student at Berkeley High School. Police said the boy had tried to recruit other high-school students to participate in the attack. It wasn’t clear how many students the boy had tried to recruit or when he had planned to carry out the attack. The Berkeley Police Department said it began an investigation on May 21 after it received a tip. The boy turned himself in on Monday after police searched his home, interviewed witnesses and obtained an arrest warrant. He was arrested on suspicion of possessing destructive device materials and threatening to commit a crime that would result in death or great bodily injury. A spokeswoman for the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office declined to say if the boy would be charged, saying it doesn’t release information about juvenile cases.