High School White Supremacist Attack Averted?

Scary news about school violence, depressing news about the persistence of white supremacist views and good news about law-enforcement success in preventing what it sounds like could have been a catastrophic combination of the two.

Alabama police say they've averted an attack by a 17-year-old who was "doing the whole white-power thing," embraced the Nazi salute and had a journal with a list of six students and a teacher whom he planned to target, the Los Angeles Times reports: 

Russell County High School student Derek Shrout, 17, appeared in court Monday after officials said they'd found bomb-making materials at his house Friday ...

Officials said a teacher had come across his journal at school and found plans for an attack. Six students and one teacher were named in the journal; five of the students were black.

The senior class president, David Kelly, told WTVM-TV that Shrout was in the junior ROTC program and "was confident, well-rounded, but as time went by, he was doing the whole white power thing."

Kelly told WTVM-TV that Shrout would do Nazi salutes at school: "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."

On Monday, Shrout's attorney, Jeremy Armstrong, said the arrest was an overreaction after the Newtown attack, according to the Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer.

Shrout, facing a felony charge of attempted assault, was expected to be placed under house arrest after posting $75,000 bond, the paper reported.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. 

 

Tweet