A New York teenager has been called a hero for stopping a potential high school shooting in Vermont.
Jack Sawyer allegedly told Angela McDevitt he was targeting his Fair Haven, Vermont high school, and she later told authorities about the plan.
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“I texted him saying a school just got shot up and he answered saying, ‘That’s fantastic, I 100 percent support it,’” the 17-year-old McDevitt, who lives in New York, told CBS News.
McDevitt said she met Sawyer at a Maine treatment facility for troubled teens. They stayed in touch as friends, but their conversations took a strange turn last week. According to a Vermont State Police affadavit, Sawyer sent McDevitt a message on Facebook, telling her on Feb. 11, “Just a few days ago I was still plotting on shooting up my old high school.” On the following day, he wrote, “It’s been the plan for like 2 years.”
On Feb. 14, the day of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting, Sawyer allegedly wrote, “It’s just natural selection taken up a notch.”
McDevitt later met with Evan Traudt, the resource officer at her New York high school, and bravely revealed the conversations with Sawyer. Traudt then contacted Vermont authorities.
“I found (what I was told) disturbing and knew I had to contact somebody in Vermont to look further into it,” Traudt told CBS News. “I followed through with it and that’s about it. She definitely is the one who did the most of it.”
Sawyer told police he was planning to shoot people at Fair Haven Union High School and was inspired by the 1999 Columbine shooting, according to the affidavit. He was prepared, buying a shotgun several days before he texted McDevitt, and wrote a journal with his plan.
Police also found a gas mask, ammunition, a video recorder and the shotgun in his car. Sawyer told them he wanted to buy an AR-15-style weapon and a handgun for the attack, and he read books about the Columbine massacre.
According to the Daily Mail, Sawyer called his journal “The Journal of an Active Shooter.” He wrote about having “big plans” to kill fellow students at the school. He also wrote about his suicidal thoughts and mental health issues. Entries in the journal dated back to December.
“I don’t care anymore who I kill, or when I kill, I just know that one day it’ll happen,” he wrote on Dec. 28.
McDevitt told CBS News she was nervous about turning in a friend, but she wanted to save lives.
“It’s not the matter of friendship if it’s about lives at hand… You need to do what you need to do,” she said.
The 18-year-old Sawyer pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and three other charges. The affidavit says Sawyer was diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety and depression.
“I was very conflicted on what to do because this was not the Jack that I knew in person,” McDevitt told the Poughkeepsie Journal. “He was just a very kind person when I knew him. I was very sad. I was very conflicted but I knew that I had to (report Sawyer’s messages) because it was a matter of lives at hand. It wasn’t a matter of just hurting someone’s feelings.”
