image courtesy Google Maps
Think back to all the things you or your peers may have done to try to appear “cool,” when you were teenagers. Smoking? Drinking? Maybe some hard drugs? A tattoo? Piercing? If this report of a Utah teen planning on blowing up his school to impress ISIS is any indication, all of your childhood rebellions were, indeed, child’s play.
While gang activity is nothing new to anyone who has grown up in an urban environment, Muslim extremism in the form of ISIS is not something many of us had to deal with when we were in high school. An unnamed (“to protect his identity,” according to police) 16-year-old (some articles have him listed as 17) brought a homemade bomb to Pine View High School in St. George, Utah on March 5th and left it in a backpack somewhere inside the building. Luckily, the kid had no idea how to follow whatever instructions he found on Google, and the bomb never actually exploded, instead just emitting smoke and freaking people the heck out.
The student is also suspected of vandalizing a United States flag and raising a homemade flag with Arabic letters, as well as defacing a wall with pro-ISIS graffiti at Hurricane High School, some 15 miles away. May he possibly have attended that school prior to Pine View? As is the case with many “problem students,” schools seem to play “hot potato” with them, eventually shuffling them off to another location after they act out. Way to protect your students by exposing every single one in the area to an unstable person. This is precisely why a gun ban should not be the only issue on our lips concerning violence toward our children. There needs to be more recourse for dealing with mentally unstable people, those with a history of violence or anyone with ties to a violent organization.
Besides admitting everything to police, the teen expressed no remorse or concern for the potential loss of life that could have occurred. Great character education these schools have.
He’s been charged with attempted murder and use of a weapon of mass destruction, among other things.
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Where Your Children Are 