Teen's Planned Bomb Plot Against School Was a Hate Crime
Derek Shrout was arrested, Jan.5, 2012 after a teacher at Russell County High School found what appears to be the teen's journal containing plans to kill six students and one teacher with homemade grenades. (ABC NEWS)
By STEVE OSUNSAMI Jan. 7, 2013
A 17-year-old, self-proclaimed white supremacist will be arraigned today in what police say was a plot to attack fellow students at his high school in Russell County, Ala., with homemade explosive devices.
Derek Shrout was arrested Friday after a teacher at Russell County High School found what appears to be the teen's journal and contacted authorities. Police said the journal contained plans to kill six students and one teacher with homemade grenades. Six of the seven individuals were black.
In the journal, police say that Shrout thought the white male on his list was gay.
"That's the reason the white male was on the list. It screams hate crime," Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said.
Investigators say Shrout started writing in his journal just three days after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14.
"The journal contained several plans that looked like potential terrorist attacks and attacks of violence and danger on the school," Taylor said.
Shrout told police that the journal was a work of fiction.
"I didn't think anything like that could happen in Russell County. I thought maybe that's just something that happens everywhere else," said student Qunitin Hobbs.
Shrout told police that he rarely interacted with the people he's accused of targeting. Police say Shrout learned how to make the devices on the Internet.
A search of Shrout's home turned up dozens of empty tobacco containers filled with shrapnel. The containers had holes in them ready for fuses to ignite. He hadn't obtained gunpowder, fuses or a substance to ignite the devices.
"He could have got the whole school, just got all of us at once," said student Javon Rogers.
Shrout is expected to plead not guilty in his court appearance later today. The teen is being charged as an adult with attempted assault.
Classmates react to arrest of accused Russell County bomb maker
By Dante Renzulli Posted: Jan 06, 2013 10:18 PM CST Updated: Jan 07, 2013 4:59 PM CST
RUSSELL COUNTY, AL (WTVM) - A Russell County high school teacher uncovered what is being called a terror plot when she found a misplaced journal in the classroom. Authorities rushed in discovered the beginnings of improvised explosives in the house of Derek Shrout, 17.
Police said he calls himself a white supremacist and he wanted to harm other students.
Classmates said they noticed a change in the suspect's behavior in the weeks leading up to his arrest.
Shrout moved to Alabama from Kansas a year ago with his military family now stationed at Fort Benning. The Russell County sheriff says Shrout was active in school and on the same day he was charged with planning a racially motivated attack on students, he was in the guidance counselor's office discussing his transfer credits.
"At first through JROTC, he was confident, well-rounded, but as time went by, he was doing the whole white power thing," said senior class president, David Kelly.
Kelly was also Shrout's battalion commander in the school's JROTC program. His friends said with the way he was acting around the school, they're not surprised he got himself into trouble.
"I saw that he was taking it more serious than anything, he started getting real deep into it, and he had a little group of people doing it with him. So, I thought it was getting to where I shouldn't be around it, so I started not even hanging out with him for a long time," said JROTC 1st Sgt. David White.
Kelly explained that Shrout would frequently give Nazi salutes at school. He said, "In the hallway, at breakfast, at the lunch tables, after school where we have our bus parking lot, he'd have his big old group of friends and they'd go around doing the whole white power crazy stuff."
Besides disagreeing with his views on white supremacy and wanting to harm other students, they question his intentions on the most fundamental level.
"Why would you want to go to a school and blow it up? You know you're going to hit somebody else; you're not just going to, in particular, hit one person. You're going to injure more than one," said White.
Sheriff's deputies found over 25 tobacco tins in Derek Shrout's house that they said he was in the process of converting into grenades. Authorities believe he was becoming involved with an organized neo-Nazi group and he learned how to make explosives through internet research.
In his statements to police, Shrout claimed his writings are a work of fiction and he never intended to go through with an attack on the school.
Shrout was arraigned Monday on felony charges of attempted assault. A judge set his bond at $75,000 with conditions. Shrout posted bail Monday evening.
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