An eighth-grader at Lehigh Acres Harns Marsh Middle School was removed from class and searched after the teacher shared the information with school officials, Marceno told a news conference Thursday .
During the search, officials found no weapons, but found a map of the school marked with the location of “each of the school’s interior cameras,” the sheriff said.
Detectives from the department’s Youth Services Criminal Investigation Division began an investigation and identified two male students, ages 13 and 14, who Marceno said were “involved in a plot to carry out a shooting. school “.
“Detectives also learned that students were trying to learn how to build pipe bombs and buy firearms on the black market,” Marceno said.
Search orders executed at the students’ homes showed “a pistol and several knives,” among the tests Marceno described as “disturbing.”
The school’s students were “safe at all times” during the incident, Lee County School District Superintendent Ken Savage said.
“As soon as the students reported the potential threat, the teacher alerted the administrators, who immediately took the school’s resource officer. Together they emptied the classroom and investigated,” Savage said.
Detectives interviewed both teens and “determined that they both met the evaluation criteria at a mental health center,” Marceno said.
The teens face conspiracy charges for committing a mass shooting, according to the sheriff.
In the past, deputies had answered calls to teenagers’ homes “almost 80 times together,” the sheriff said.
Marceno reiterated his department’s commitment to a zero-tolerance policy and said, “Those responsible for threats, real or false, will be held accountable.”
The teens will undergo a psychiatric evaluation under the Florida Baker Act before being taken to a detention center, a police spokesman told CNN. The Baker Act allows mental health facilities to detain a person for up to 72 hours for evaluation.