Teen Who Threatened Columbine-Style Attack Spouted Hatred in Diary

Mar 3, 2000 - 09:47 PM
The Associated Press

ROYAL PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A diary kept by a 17-year-old boy who tried to recruit classmates to carry out a Columbine-style attack on his high school is filled with swastika drawings and ramblings of hate.

Derik Lehman, a junior at Royal Palm Beach High School, wrote eight pages of a composition notebook with yearnings to kill fellow students who had ridiculed him, according to the state attorney's office. On a map of the school's classrooms, Lehman allegedly suggested 25 to 40 people could be killed.

"I am lost. My hate is unconditional. I look up to people like Hitler and I grin at Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's act of murder and suicide," said one entry in the diary released by the state attorney's office.

Harris and Klebold fatally shot a teacher and 12 classmates at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in April before killing themselves.

The teen's attorney said her client needs psychiatric treatment, not imprisonment.

Michelle Suskauer said Lehman never had possession of a firearm or explosives, nor did he have the means to carry out his alleged plan.

"Anyone who knows Derik knows he wouldn't act on it. It may very well have been a reaction to other people," Suskauer said, referring to her claim that Lehman, who is pudgy, has been traumatized by students teasing him about his weight.

Lehman faces adult charges of solicitation to shoot into a public building after he allegedly attempted to recruit other students. The third-degree felony carries a maximum five-year prison term.

Lehman is out of jail on house arrest and is receiving daily psychiatric treatment. He was suspended from school and efforts to expel him are under way.

The teen was detained Feb. 3 after three students and one of their fathers told school officials that Lehman asked the boys to help with the attack.

Officers searched his home and found the diary, a map of the school and an Internet manual on making bombs. No weapons or bomb-making materials were found, but Lehman was trying to obtain them, police said.

"If I had access to firearms I really do think I would fall into insanity," said a dairy entry dated Jan. 23. "I hate people so much I would be willing to kill them. It's sad that I am nothing but hate incarnate."

Prosecutors believe the rantings in the diary were deadly serious. "The state's position is that this was a plan put together to be put into action," said Mike Edmondson, Krischer's spokesman. "The state's concern was to avoid the potential for a major tragedy at this high school."

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