 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
– 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.