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The
teenager, described by police as a white female, detailed her
plan to commit murder at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in a notebook that was found by fellow students who
alerted school authorities, police said in a statement.
The youth, who police did not identify, was charged with
criminal attempt to commit murder and sent to a youth detention
center in Georgia.
Gainesville Police Department officials said the investigation
indicated that the teenager was targeting the church based on
the racial demographic of its members.
"This is an active investigation and a prime example of how
strong relationships between the student body, school
administration, and law enforcement can intercept a potentially
horrific incident," Police Chief Jay Parrish said in the
statement.
A 2015 attack on a church in Charleston "does appear to have
played some type of role in this," the New York Times quoted a
police officer, Sergeant Kevin Holbrook, as saying.
A self-avowed white supremacist, Dylann Roof, went to a Bible
study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015, where he killed
nine African-American church members with a .45-caliber Glock
semiautomatic pistol.
The Georgia teen had assembled a collection of butcher knives
and other straight-edged weapons and she had visited the church
once when no one was present, the Times reported.
A representative of the Gainesville police was not immediately
available for comment.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Rich McKay,
Robert Birsel)
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