Florida Teens Arrested In School Shooting Plot, One Had "Terror Day" Journal
Three teens arrested after scare involving loaded gun, Instagram threat, and “Terror Day” journal
Three teens have been arrested after a school shooting scare at Coral Springs High School on Monday. One had a ten-page handwritten “Terror Day” journal, which provides a frightening look at the motivations of a depressed teen who wanted to be, according to the journal, “the worst solo gunman of all time.”
On Monday morning, 17-year-old Ryan Trollinger, a former Coral Springs student who withdrew from the school last year, was arrested in the school cafeteria with a loaded 9mm gun. Trollinger was seen showing the gun to another student and was handcuffed in the school cafeteria with the weapon in his waistband. The school went on lockdown while they searched for the student he was seen showing the gun to. When they found that student, he had the “Terror Day” journal in his pocket. That student, who remains unnamed, was hospitalised under Florida’s Baker Act, which puts someone on a 72-hour hold while they receive a psychological evaluation. It remains unclear if the two students made a plan together, but for now, police are referring to them as “associates.”
In the journal, the teen wrote that he wanted his shooting to be bigger than Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook. “I want to beat their kills,” he wrote. He also wrote that he was upset because he didn’t have a girlfriend: “Love might cure me from my evil thoughts and my hate. I just want to be loved … My life is full of rage without a girlfriend.”
In Florida, you don’t need a permit to purchase or a license for a gun, and you don’t need to register your weapons. That sounds damn near ideal for a pissed off 18-year-old. And no amount of security or armed guards (or armed teachers, for the nut jobs who think that’s a swell idea) is going to prevent a kid who wants to bring a gun to school from doing so. This kid was let in through the cafeteria door. Unless we want to turn our schools into prisons, we need to look at other ways to keep our kids safe, and not letting them have unfettered access to guns would be a great place to start.
A third teen, 18-year-old Sebastian Darrah, who is also not a student at Coral Springs, was arrested early Tuesday morning for posting a threat against the school on Instagram. The threat read, “Watch out for round two springs. We comin’ guns blazin’ you locked our n***** up.” He was reportedly upset about the arrest of Trollinger, who is a friend of his. According to the arrest report of one of the officers, Darrah stated that “he did not intend to actually shoot anyone at the school, but meant the post to be a joke.” Great joke, idiot.
Trollinger remains in custody, and Darrah was released with a GPS ankle monitor and was ordered to stay off the internet. He faces at least a year in prison. “Doesn’t feel like a joke now, right?” said Broward County Judge Michael Davis.
Word, Judge.
