text: – John David LaDue had it all figured out. He would kill his mother, father and sister and then create a diversion to keep first responders busy while he went to Waseca Junior/Senior High School to wreak havoc. 
   
   There, the 17-year-old planned to set off pressure-cooker bombs full of nails and metal ball bearings in the cafeteria. Students who weren’t maimed or killed would be gunned down in the halls, he told police. 
   
   After his arrest Tuesday, the high school junior said he intended to kill “as many students as he could,” before he was killed by the SWAT team, according to charging documents filed in Waseca County District Court. 
   
   LaDue was charged Thursday with four counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree damage to property and six counts of possession of a bomb by someone under 18. Police found seven firearms and at least six completed bombs in his bedroom and in the storage unit where he was arrested. 
   
   Police on Friday said they have no further information to share on the investigation and declined to comment on how LaDue was able to obtain so many guns and bomb-making materials. Students in the Waseca schools were home on Friday on a scheduled off day. 
   
   A community meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Friday at Waseca High School “to communicate to families our plans for moving forward together,” the School District said in a notice on its website. 
   
   Parents throughout the town were shaken and shocked as they began to hear details of LaDue’s plot. 
   
   “It’s just too scary to put in words,” said a parent who has kids in Waseca’s middle school and high school but asked that her name not be used. “Everybody in town feels sick to their stomach. Scared. There were tears today.” 
   
   Police Capt. Kris Markeson said that he believes LaDue would have carried out his murderous plot “just because of the amount of preparation and thought he put into this.” 
   
   LaDue had planned and practiced for 10 months, refining the chemicals in his bombs to try to find a more lethal combination. He set off “practice bombs” on the playground at Hartley Elementary School, Faith United Methodist Church, Oak Park and high school softball fields. Some of those bombs were found in March, raising concerns. 
   
   The criminal complaint said LaDue told police that he originally planned the attack for April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre that killed 13 people in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. 
   
   That was thwarted because that day was Easter Sunday and there was no school. 
   
   Markeson said police believe the attack would have happened “within the next few weeks” if it hadn’t been for an alert 911 caller who grew suspicious after she saw a tall, white male wearing a backpack open a storage unit, go inside and close the door. 
   
   Chelsie Schellhas was washing dishes Tuesday night when she noticed a boy with a backpack and a fast-food bag walking through her back yard toward the nearby MiniMax Storage Units. 
   
   “He walked through the puddles when there was a perfectly good road he could have walked on,” she said. “It just didn’t seem right to me because we see people come and go with their trucks, and they don’t come on foot and cut through people’s back yards. It was like he was blatantly trying not to be seen. That’s why I thought it was odd.” 
   
   And then it took “some time” for him to open the door, leading Schellhas to believe he was breaking in. Before he shut the door, Schellhas noticed trash and Wal-Mart bags in the unit. That also “didn’t look right,” she said. 
   
   According to the complaint, three Waseca officers were sent to the storage facility at 7:24 p.m. 
   
   LaDue was in the unit when officers arrived. Several small lanterns were set up inside to provide light, and officers saw ammo boxes, a scale, a pressure cooker and packaging for red iron oxide, materials commonly used for making bombs. ||||| Minnesota teenager John David LaDue methodically plotted a horrific assault in three acts designed to inflict maximum casualties in his home and school before his expected death at the hands of a police SWAT unit, according to court documents. 
   
   An affidavit in a criminal complaint filed in a Waseca County court paints a chilling portrait of the 17-year-old's preparations for what police say was intended to be a murderous rampage that would begin at his home and, after a brief detour to set a diversionary fire, continue at the high school he attended. 
   
   LaDue, who is charged with attempted murder and explosives in connection with the alleged plot, amassed a frightening arsenal over a nine-month period, including an SKS assault rifle with 400 rounds of ammunition, a 9mm Beretta handgun with ammunition and at least six homemade bombs, according to the affidavit by Waseca police Capt. Kris Markeson. 
   
   The affidavit did not make clear how LaDue obtained the weapons. 
   
   As detailed in a 180-page notebook found in a locked guitar case in LaDue's bedroom, the teenager planned to kill his parents and sister with a .22-caliber rifle to avoid making too much noise, then proceed to a rural location and start a fire in an attempt to attract and occupy first responders. 
   
   While the blaze burned, he intended to go to Waseca Junior & Senior High School, which he attended, and set off pressure-cooker bombs and other explosive devices in the cafeteria. He then would kill the school's liaison police officer and shoot as many students as possible before dying at the hands of police marksmen, Markeson said. 
   
   "LaDue planned on setting off pipe bombs and throwing Molotov cocktails down the main wing corridors in the school, and then shooting and killing students as they rushed out of the corridors," according to the affidavit. 
   
   In preparation for the assault, it said, LaDue admitted he had previously detonated explosive devices at a nearby elementary school, outside a local church and in a city park in an effort to refine his bomb-making skills. 
   
   In addition to documenting his plan, the journal contained entries describing LaDue's "thoughts, plans, to-do lists, supply lists, successes and failures (in his bomb experimentation) .. attempts and successes he made at acquiring additional firearms and ammunition," Markeson said. It also outlined chillingly mundane details of the plot, such as LaDue getting a job so he could purchase necessary supplies, getting a checking account and debit cards and renting a storage locker to store his growing cache of weaponry, he said. 
   
   It also described the strange encounter on Tuesday between LaDue and police officers at a storage facility where he had rented a unit, ultimately unraveling his plot. 
   
   Three Waseca police officers arrived at the storage facility after a neighbor called to report that she had seen someone sneak through her backyard and enter the commercial business from the rear. 
   
   When the officers announced their presence, the affidavit said, LaDue was initially defensive, but then told Officer Tim Schroeder that he would talk to them if the officer could guess correctly what he was doing in the storage unit. When Schroeder said he believed LaDue had been making explosive devices, the teenager agreed to accompany police to the Waseca Police Department, where he was subsequently interviewed and arrested, it said. 
   
   In addition to the guns, police recovered an array of bomb-making and related gear at LaDue's home and the storage locker. Other items included various containers of ball bearings, a pressure cooker, three boxes of Remington 12-gauge shotgun shells, military trip wire, a ski mask and a black duster/trench coat. Three 5-pound bags of potassium perchlorate and a 10-pound bag of red iron oxide were among the array of chemicals recovered, as well. 
   
   The criminal complaint said LaDue told police that he originally planned the attack for April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre that killed 13 people in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. He changed his plans when he realized April 20 was Easter Sunday and school was not in session. 
   
   The Bloomington, Minn., police bomb squad detonated the completed bombs, and members of the squad were shocked by the amount of bomb-making chemicals and components that LaDue had in his possession, the affidavit said. 
   
   First published May 2 2014, 9:08 AM ||||| The woman credited with foiling a Columbine-style attack at a Minnesota school nearly approached the suspicious teen she saw trudging across her backyard — but she said Friday she's relieved her cousin urged her to call the police instead. 
   
   Chelsie Schellhas, 21, was washing dishes when she spotted John David LaDue, 17, cutting through her muddy backyard to get to a nearby storage facility. 
   
   "This person is either breaking in or he is staying the night there," Schellhas said she thought after watching LaDue fiddle with the storage unit lock for 10 minutes. "Turns out he was making bombs instead," she said. 
   
   LaDue was charged Thursday with 10 attempted murder and explosives counts after police determined he was two weeks away from carrying out a plot to kill his family and then bomb Waseca Junior/Senior High School in an effort to murder "as many students as he could." 
   
   Schellhas' first instinct was to question the trespasser, but her cousin encouraged her to call the police, who found three fully functional bombs, bomb-making materials, gunpowder, numerous firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in LaDue's home and the storage locker. 
   
   The police "told us it is a good thing we called, and we saved a bunch of people's lives," said Schellhas' cousin, Katie Harty. 
   
   But Schellhas added, "It is hard for me to believe I am a hero. I didn't take the bomb out of his hands, I just witnessed it," she said. 
   
   Schellhas does realize that if police hadn't discovered LaDue's plan, the outcome could have been "horrible." 
   
   She said that in her small town, everyone has a connection to the school, and such a tragedy would have left the community devastated. "My cousin would've been dead, my boyfriend's sister, teachers that I have known." 
   
   Instead, Waseca residents are heaping messages of thanks on the young woman. "The flowers I received today — they say 'thank you, from a grateful parent,'" Schellhas said. 
   
   — Elisha Fieldstadt 
   
   First published May 2 2014, 3:26 PM
target: – The Minnesota teenager accused this week of planning a school massacre didn't just make a few offhand remarks. He laid out his plan in methodical detail in a notebook he kept locked inside his guitar case, and police are convinced that John David LaDue was poised to strike within weeks, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The 17-year-old had a three-stage plan: He would kill his parents and sister at home with a .22-caliber rifle, go to a rural spot to start a fire and draw first-responders, and finally head to Waseco High School to kill as many people as he could with guns and homemade bombs. He planned to be killed himself by police. “LaDue planned on setting off pipe bombs and throwing Molotov cocktails down the main wing corridors in the school, and then shooting and killing students as they rushed out of the corridors,” says the criminal affidavit, reports NBC News. Police found an assault rifle with 400 rounds of ammo, a 9mm handgun, and at least a half-dozen bombs at the teen's storage unit and home. When officers confronted him in the storage unit, they say he basically taunted them by making them guess what he was doing before answering any questions. When an officer guessed he was making bombs, the teen agreed to go to the station. The plot unraveled thanks to a 21-year-old who called police when she saw LaDue cut through her yard on his way to the storage unit and then act suspiciously outside it. "The flowers I received today—they say, 'Thank you, from a grateful parent,'" Chelsie Schellhas tells NBC.