“I hate my school”: Why are more British teenagers plan shooting attacks? | crime

On the morning of September 13, the 18-year-old Nicholas Prosper, he was arrested when he went on a residential street in Luton. Minutes earlier he had murdered his mother, younger brother and sister and shot her dead in her family house.

The neighbors called the police after hearing shots from the apartment in the Leabank Tower on the Marsh Farm Estate of Luton, and the officials found Bramingham Road Prosper shortly afterwards. Later on this day, the search for the area discovered a invited shotgun and more than 30 cartridges in a nearby bush.

The police now believe that Prosper had only carried out the first half of his plan and planned a shootout in the Catholic elementary school of St. Joseph, where he and his siblings were students years ago. The place where the teenager was recorded is located on the most direct hiking route between his house and school, which means that the incident has come to a school since the Dunblane massacre from 1996.

The police unveiled the conspiracy after Prosper guilty on Monday to murder his mother Juliana Falcon (48), sister Giselle Prosper (13) and brother Kyle Prosper (16).

Detective Chief Inspector Sam Khanna from the Major Crime Unit of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire said: “What was uncovered during our investigation left no doubt that his intentions to do an attack in a school, but luckily caused further damage.”

The case is part of a growing number of school situations discovered in Great Britain, in which young men and boys are inspired by online material that glorify the US massacre, including the Columbine High School shooting from 1999. In the year until March 2024, 162 transfers were carried out (the government of terrorism in connection with the interest in school massacre prevent what corresponds to an increase of 2% compared to the previous year. Only 19 meant that people were taken over to intervention and mentoring as part of the program.

According to the current laws, potential school shooters who lack an ideological goal cannot be pursued by criminal law because of the preparation of terrorist files. Cases were therefore treated with a variety of laws, including conspiracy for murder and possession of a firearm with the intention of endangering life.

Jonathan Hall KC, the independent appraiser of terrorism legislation, said that these cases were a “concern” and the pursuit of the problem is difficult. “School shots obsession observer. “The question is … is the size of the problem fully recognized, and this cohort has something so unique that additional options for treating the risk have to be found?”

Hall said that school scales that do not contain an ideological cause do not come under the legal definition of terrorism, but seem to be “very appealing” for people with a strong feeling of complaint.

“In view of the young age, in which people are now encountering the radar to fight terrorism, it may not be surprising that a large source of complaint is their school,” he added.

Three days before the success granted his guilty requests, a nameless 17-year-old boy admitted to performing a mass shooting in his school in Edinburgh after he had “idolized” the Columbine murderers and spoke openly with classmates of his admiration.

Last January it was found that a Lidl bearing worker owned by weapons built a weapon chamber of homemade firearms and explosives for a “Hitman attack” on the police and his work colleagues as well as a separate bombing and mass shooting against his former school. The then 31 -year -old Reed Wischhusen was again inspired by the massacre in Columbine, as was the Gloucestershire Kyle Davies, whose own plans were thwarted when the authorities caught a glock gun and ammunition that he ordered online.

Weeks after Davies had been arrested in 2018, two boys were detained in their Yorkshire secondary school for a mass shooting. Thomas Wyllie and Alex Bolland recorded the Columbine shooters and a judge found that they were seen in America “terror in the scale of school shootings that were shown in America. Shot shotguns for the task.

“When this was found, I have committed one of the worst atrocities in British history or killed myself,” wrote Wyllie in his diary. “I hate my school. I'll wipe it out. I will kill everyone. “

While only a small number of school massacres were officially confirmed and prosecuted in Great Britain, many more were suspected. The police, who examined the Southport attack, believe that Axel Rudakubana's original goal may have been his former secondary school, but he changed his plans after his father had taken a taxi there on the last day of the semester who was a week before his attack on a dance class with Taylor Swift topic. It was reported in 2019 that he should prevent after a teacher researched him during an IT course.

In the meantime, Prosper will be convicted later this month, and his guilty requests mean that the details of his inspiration, planning and preparation have not yet been published.

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But the observer Has seen several online accounts of the teenager that show a strong interest in school shootings and violence. Videos that were uploaded on his YouTube channel showed an obsession with a video game with a vow of “mutilating” his sister because they make the wrong decisions in connection with a child character. Prosper called himself the “chosen” of the character and said that he was led by the fictional eight -year -old girl “when Christan is led by Jesus Christ”.

His online footprint also showed a strong interest in school shootings. E -Mail addresses that were linked to the teenager seemed to pay homage to Adam Lanza, who carried out the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, while his Instagram page contained drawings by Lanza and the Columbine shooters.

All three men are widely published in online communities that concentrate on mass murders, whereby Tikok videos, drawings and fan fiction are regularly published online by fans around the world. Researchers from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue have followed these online movements, in which young people create an “emotional connection” and a “parasocial relationship” with previous mass shooters.

Senior Analyst Cody Zoschak said that the forums had a “combination of self -strudicalization and group promotion of radicalization” towards violence. “The subcultures are very closely with each other and with ideological communities, especially with all right, intertwined,” he added.

“But at the moment there is no bucket for these people who can be used by the authorities so that they are treated like ideologically motivated people or slide through the cracks because they do not fit the criteria.”

Gina Vale, a criminologist at the University of Southampton, who will be carpented with a milestone about terrorist exertion in teenage in England and Wales, said that school shooters lead “with a good example” for British children who strive for their own attacks.

“Keeping shootings in the United States, which were committed by teenagers, offer children and young people in Great Britain a tangible example of the inspection of mass violence,” she said. “The massacre at the Columbine High School is excellent in violent extremist young people, which has not only become the achievement of mass victims, but also the symbolism of the attackers – down and including the distinctive clothing that was worn during the massacre.”

Zoschak believes that the phenomenon is part of a more comprehensive trend towards “nihilistic violence”, which differs significantly from ideological terrorism that safety systems in Great Britain should tackle. “Violence is emotionally and selfish as political or ideological, and there is really no desired consequence of violence,” he said.

A government spokesman said that an independent examination of the murders in Southport would examine the broader challenge of increasing youth violence and extremism to ensure that nobody falls through the cracks.

“We continue to work at speeds to identify the type and yardstick of a growing cohort that is fixed by force and to improve interventions with several authorities to treat the risk that they represent,” they said.