2 Florida middle schoolers arrested for allegedly plotting mass school shooting

Two Florida teens were allegedly engaged in a plot to carry out a school shooting until a teacher was tipped off about a possible concealed weapon.

Two Florida middle schoolers with an apparent interest in the Columbine High School massacre were allegedly plotting to carry out a school shooting of their own until a teacher was tipped off about a possible concealed weapon, authorities said. The teacher at Harns Marsh Middle School in Lehigh Acres, near Fort Myers, alerted school administrators and a school resource officer about the tip from students Wednesday, authorities said. A search of an eighth grader's backpack did not turn up a gun, but administrators allegedly found a map that "contains markings indicating the location of each of the school's interior cameras," Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said during a press briefing Thursday afternoon. An investigation by the office's youth services criminal investigations division ultimately identified two students -- a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old -- "involved in a plot to carry out a school shooting," Marceno said. The pair were "extensively studying" the 1999 Columbine High School shooting -- in which two teens killed 13 people -- and attempting to learn how to construct pipe bombs, the sheriff said.