US police arrested two students in the Los Angeles area on suspicion of conspiring to conduct a mass shooting at a high school.
The South Pasadena High School students planned to shoot "as many students as possible" as well as three staff members of the school in a plot thwarted after school administrators called police, press tv reported.
The teenagers did not possess weapons, but they were trying to get them, said Sgt. Brian Solinsky, of the South Pasadena Police Department.
"This is a prime example of school officials recognizing suspicious behavior," Solinsky said in a statement. "It was this information that helped prevent a horrific tragedy. "
Detectives found sufficient evidence at the students’ homes and made the arrests, officials said.
One of the students was arrested without resistance, but the second resisted arrest which made officers force entry into his home. He was busted in the home before he could run away from the officers.
They were both ready to begin their senior year in the community of about 25,000 people eight miles Northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
The arrests came just a day after a teenager was captured in connection with a shooting threat in the Santa Clarita Valley which turned out to be a prank.
In one of the most fatal school shootings in the US, twenty first-graders were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.
Since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, 44 more shootings have occurred at US K-12 schools and universities, one every 10 days, killing 28 people, according to a report released in February.