Riverland teens due to stand trial over ‘school massacre plot’ plead guilty to lesser charge

Two teenagers due to stand trial over an alleged massacre plot at a Riverland high school have pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

• ‘From massacre plot to action in four days’, police allege

Two teenagers due to stand trial over an alleged massacre plot at a Riverland high school have pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

The boys, aged 17 and 19, were expected to stand trial in the Supreme Court next week on charges of conspiring to murder and solicit to murder.

But prosecutors on Friday withdrew those charges and the duo, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, instead pleaded guilty to the downgraded charge of aggravated threatening life.

The court heard the pair “threatened to kill or endanger the lives of students and teachers” at their Riverland high school on October 31, 2017, “intending to arouse a fear that the threat would be, or was likely to be, carried out”.

The duo were arrested in November 2017 over the alleged plot, which the court had previously heard would have involved the use of guns, knives and homemade bombs.

At the time of their arrest, police said the duo were “actively planning” their attack and told some people of their plans, who alerted others.

Prosecutors have since alleged the teenagers formed a suicide pact and were making molotov cocktails and homemade explosive devices in preparation for an attack.

They said the pair had devised a plan over social media to “kill as many” students and staff as possible in an attack before the end of 2017.

During appearances in the Adelaide Magistrates Court last year, the court heard the older boy was obsessed with school shootings and kept detailed diaries of his plan dating back to 2015, but they were “a way of him venting” and “never anything he intended to act upon”.

The pair had also allegedly sourced trench coats to wear — mirroring the infamous Columbine High School shooters.

The court also heard the younger boy had crafted the explosives.

But lawyers for the youth had told the court he had been merely fantasising and expressing his anger toward the world, and engaged in “idle chatter” stemming from his “depressed state of mind”.

Lawyers for the pair had previously applied to have the charges thrown out of court, saying their clients had been “talking tough”.

On Friday, lawyers for the younger teenager, who was a youth at the time of the offences, said he would seek to be sentenced as a youth.

The pair had been facing life behind bars but the maximum penalty for an adult found guilty of aggravated threatening life is 12 years in prison.

The pair were remanded in custody to return to court to hear submissions on sentence next month.