Teen Receives 22 Years Behind Bars for School Shooting Plot

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) – An Everett teenager has been sentenced to more than 22 years in prison for plotting a massacre at his high school.

The Daily Herald reports that Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Bruce Weiss had been weighing the sentence for 19-year-old Joshua O’Connor for two weeks before issuing it Thursday.

O’Connor had planned to attack ACES, an alternative high school in Mukilteo last April. His grandmother foiled the plan when she found a journal full of his plans in his bedroom, along with a rifle hidden in his guitar case and evidence he had stuck up a minimart.

The grandmother, Catherine Katsel O’Connor, asked the judge to show mercy to her grandson. The judge called her a hero, but he declined defense requests for a sentence below the standard sentencing range, saying the plans were methodically thought out rather than just youthful or impulsive.

In a written statement to the court, O’Connor apologized, saying he’d been suicidal and abusing drugs and alcohol.
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Information from: The Daily Herald, http://www.heraldnet.com