Teenagers arrested plotted to attack Landstown High School

Ten years after Columbine, Virginia Beach,VA has arrested several teens connected to explosives founds in the parents garage.  28 pipe bombs were found in one teens house, videos made talking about the details of how they were going to carry out their awful crime. Shot guns found as well, my question is Where are the parents in the middle income homes of these kids? There are three or four teens so far that have been arrested. They all live in middle income neighborhoods. How can you have 28 pipe bombs in your garage and not know it? I rasied a teen by myself and I knew pretty much what he did. I darn sure know I didn't have 28 pipe bombs in my garage.

VIRGINIA BEACH -- Few people will forget the images to come from Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999 after students went on a deadly shooting rampage at Columbine High School. Prosecutors in Virginia Beach say three teenagers accused of planning to blow up Landstown High School took inspiration from that day, planning to commemorate its 10th anniversary by pulling off their own version of Columbine Monday.

"Although they were toddlers during that time," explains Dr. D. Giovanni Scott of Faithworks Juvenile Service Group, "there is still the continual kind of circle of angst that just follows all adolescents."

Scott, a licensed clinical psychologist, says that angst can lead to a need for attention, especially for someone who feels isolated. The bigger the feeling of loneliness, the bigger, and more desperate, the way a teenager sets himself apart can be.

"If you are in the pit of darkness, there's a longer fight out rather than, say, if you're just having a bad day." Scott continues,"Someone that is very distressed, very despaired, they are reaching out in such incredible intensity to feel something, to experience something, that, oftentimes, it does take an event that is so catastrophic to kind of get there and jar them."

The image of teenagers who could put together an attack like the one at Columbine may not be the one most parents have. Scott tells 13News the problem crosses socioeconomic lines. At its root is an issue that isn't limited to the "bad kids."

"There's a sense of nothingness, you know: 'I have all these possessions. I have all these people around me. Perhaps, I'm the class president, or perhaps, you know, I'm of another position of status in my peer group, and I still feel empty.'" Scott adds, "These are going to also be children that are, you know, coming from affluent families that have access to all this material, all of this information, that are given far more freedoms because of what their parents can afford."

The arrests of the students in Virginia Beach, Scott hopes, will renew parents' commitments to "parent." The psychologist encourages people to have daily contact in their children's lives, know their teenagers' friends, and not to brush off continual mood swings or changes in sleep patterns. Also, you may want to take a cue from Scott's mother who she describes as "vigilant" in her parenting approach.