EDITORIAL — A bullet dodged

Police say they have thwarted a planned school shooting by seven 15-year-olds in Laguna who were allegedly being radicalized by someone who played online games.

According to reports, the seven teenagers allegedly met online last January and were asked by the individual, whom police have yet to identify, to go to another chatroom where he allegedly shared material involving school shootings and mass murder with them.

The seven teenagers, one of them a girl, were allegedly persuaded to carry out an attack and planned it for February 16 in a school in Calabarzon.

The Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG) said its foreign counterparts alerted them to the plot after seeing a discussion online about the planned attack.

The ACG said it tracked down the seven teenagers online then apprehended them before they could get weapons to carry out the shooting. The agency seized items and accessories from the teenagers that were consistent with radical and white supremacist doctrine.

It would seem we dodged a bullet here. There hasn’t been a school shooting in the Philippines yet and we hope there never will be. You have probably seen the aftermath of a school shooting in reports from the U.S.; the horror, the heartbreak, and the millions of questions that can’t seem to be answered.

We certainly don’t want something like that happening here.

Before you dismiss what teenagers can do, recall the case of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris who shot dead 13 students and a teacher and hurt 23 others in Columbine, Colorado, in April of 1999.

Those Laguna teenagers may be young, but given enough motivation they could have carried on with the attack. The already had clothes and accessories prepared for the occasion; perhaps it was only a matter of time before they could actually get weapons to use.

Police added that the teenagers, who all came from broken families, are now being monitored by their teachers and parents.

We should also not ignore red flags in kids when we see them. Indeed, red flags could have prevented many school shootings had they been noticed on time. But sometimes red flags don’t appear.

Needless to say, some teenagers need watching more than others in what they are doing, who they are talking to in real life and online, and what they have become interested in.