Students react after classmates arrested for allegedly plotting school shooting

Students at Banning High School have been talking about two 15-year-old classmates who were arrested after allegedly plotting to shoot up the school.

“Just that they might have got into trouble before,” one sophomore told KESQ and CBS Local 2 reporter Joe Galli outside of the school Tuesday after class.

2 Banning HS students arrested for allegedly planning school shooting

“It was really scary, you know, because those are people that you are with every day and it makes you think that there might be more people who could think of that kind of stuff,” said the same sophomore student.

At about 4 p.m. on Monday, some students told school officials and the on-campus police officer that they overheard the two suspects talk about shooting up the school. Police investigated and found further evidence that these two students had been plotting together. Police searched the homes of the two students and did not find any weapons. Students we talked to never thought something like this would happen at their school.

“Everyone here is actually very open and there is not much trouble that goes on around here,” said a junior at the school.

Police and school officials take any type of threat against their students extremely seriously.

“You look at incidents that have occurred like Columbine where the information was there, and people had it and if they brought this information forward to law enforcement something catastrophic could have been prevented,” said Alejandro Diaz, chief of the Banning Police Department.

Diaz said the students that reported what they heard did the right thing, and by coming forward and saying something they could have saved lives.

“If your child comes to your home with information such as information that we dealt with yesterday, where they may have overhead students talking about creating some type of violence at the school, reach out to your local law enforcement and report it, because you could be saving the lives of thousands of people,” Diaz said.

Because of their age, the identities of the two students has not been released. The two suspected students have been booked on suspicion of making criminal threats.

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