Chat room threats of attack lead Arkansas teen to police

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- High school junior Lauren Hess says she grew increasingly alarmed as a boy in an Internet chat room told her he wanted to recreate a Columbine-like massacre at his New York City high school.

"I told him it's not worth it to kill all these people. You need to really think about this," said Lauren Hess, 17.

She contacted police, and honor student Lukasz Lagucik, 17, was arrested at his home early Friday.

Authorities said no weapons were found in a search of Lagucik's home in New York's borough of Queens. Lagucik was charged with making a terror threat and other offenses and could face seven years in prison if convicted.

In a handwritten statement he gave to police, Lagucik apologized and said he had tried to scare girls he met online by talking about buying guns and making bombs, said Patrick Clark, a spokesman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

"I realized what kind of big mistake I made, and I'm really sorry, it was really foolish to do such a thing," Lagucik said in the note, read in court late Friday.

Clark said bail was set at $15,000. Lagucik's relatives were trying to raise the money to free him, but it was unclear Saturday night whether they were able to do so, said Ken Finkelman, a Legal Aid Society attorney who is representing the teen.

Lagucik is due back in court Feb. 7.

A woman answering the telephone at Lagucik's home declined comment Saturday, but Finkelman called him "really a great kid. He's a straight-A student, he's an altar boy in his church. If you talk to his neighbors, he's not just a great student, but a great neighbor. He shovels their snow."

Finkelman said he wants to see transcripts from the chat rooms and is dubious of Lagucik's written statement, made after he was "in custody for hours."

But whatever was said in the chat room, Finkelman said Lagucik is not guilty of making a terror threat because his statements were not intended to terrorize a population.

Hess said she had been chatting with Lagucik since Monday, and that he said he and a friend planned to kill classmates with guns and homemade bombs on Thursday.

She said she took that to mean that they were planning a copycat school shooting, "except they wanted to make it kill more people," she said.

Hess' hometown in eastern Arkansas is about 60 miles south of Jonesboro, where two boys killed four classmates and a teacher March 24, 1998. The Jonesboro shootings came about a year before the Columbine school massacre in Colorado.

Hess said Lagucik often quoted Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the gunmen at Columbine who shot to death 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.

At one point, she said, Lagucik ended a chat session saying he had to go finish making the bombs.

"He kept telling me to watch the news," Hess said. "I was like, 'Well you don't need to do this.' I kept telling him over and over again."

At one point, she said, Lagucik told her he and his friend loaded the guns and bombs into his car and drove to school, but turned around and drove back to his house.

She said she was skeptical of his account.

"I told him I'm glad you didn't do it and I think you need help," she said. "Apparently I was fed a bunch of lies, but he was very convincing at times and I was concerned and knew I needed to tell someone."