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player ready...The healing process began Thursday at Hart Junior High School in Homewood when 10 students who were unwittingly dragged into a classmate’s alleged foiled plot to kidnap four girls and kill one of them gathered at the south suburban school to discuss their fears.
It was the first time the youngsters–four girls who were the targets of what police say was a planned abduction and six boys who had received a letter asking for help in the alleged scheme–had been to school since last week when officials found the letter detailing the alleged plot.
During the three-hour meeting with police and school officials, the students and their parents talked about their anger. They worried about whether it could happen again. And they wondered what school officials and police were doing to protect them.
“We wanted to make sure things were safe and that it was OK to send our kids back,” the mother of one of the girls said. “I can’t say that I’m not nervous my daughter is not home with me right now, but I know I had to let her go back. The meeting helped me feel a little bit safer about letting her go back.”
The students returned to school less than a week after police uncovered what they say was a kidnapping and murder plot devised by a 12-year-old classmate. Homewood police say the boy sent a two-page letter to the six boys asking them to help build a two-story barricade in which to imprison the four girls.
The boy was charged Wednesday in a juvenile petition with one count of solicitation to commit first-degree murder and six counts of solicitation to commit aggravated kidnapping. Cook County prosecutors said the kidnapping solicitation charges stem from the six letters. They would not say what prompted the murder solicitation charge.
Bob Benjamin, spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, said Thursday that officials could not comment on the case because a Juvenile Court judge closed the hearing and sealed the file.
The letter, which at times sounded like an adolescent fantasy, talked about the need to gather weapons, including guns and explosives, such as “water balloons filled with gasoline or another flammable liquid.”
The only hint of a motive for the alleged kidnapping and murder scheme was one sentence in the letter: “I have been thinking after nearly a year of hell received from a group of girls, I will revolt.”
Investigators say there is no indication the boy had any means to carry out such a detailed scheme. But, amid the rash of school shootings across the country, officials in Homewood were not taking chances.
School officials responded swiftly. They called police in to investigate. They stationed plainclothes police officers at the school’s doors and called in counselors and psychologists.
Supt. James Mahan, of Homewood School District 153, said it is important that school officials make the 10 students feel safe and welcome.
“Our biggest concerns are that these students feel comfortable and safe here and that they not feel like they are the accused,” he said, referring to the 10 students involved.