19-year-old man accused of planning mass shooting at Florida High School

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ORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Police officers pulled over a 19-year-old recent graduate from Okeechobee High School because the headlight on his truck was out. Then they found handwritten pages detailing plans to kill everyone at his high school.

Henry Horton IV, of Okeechobee, was arrested Thursday by Palm Beach County Sheriff’s detectives after they uncovered his plans for mass killings at multiple locations, according to a probable cause affidavit, discovering that he had done “recon” at two targets in Parkland, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Asked why he would attack Stoneman Douglas, the site of a school massacre that killed 17 and injured 17 in 2018, the affidavit says, Horton replied, “for attention or fame.”

Agreeing to speak to the officers without a lawyer, Horton detailed his plans to kill 15 people at his former high school, Okeechobee High, on his 22nd birthday in 2026, including an administrator, then to go on a stabbing spree at a Miami church, according to the affidavit. He said he wanted to be killed by police afterward.

When the detective asked him why, he said he wanted to do something violent because his stepmother had kicked him out of the house. He had written a manifesto, which was in his truck when he was stopped.

Asked if he had done recon anywhere else, Horton told the detective that he had gone to a church in Parkland near Stoneman Douglas High a few weeks ago, according to the affidavit. His truck was spotted in the area on Sept. 11, the affidavit says.

A few weeks before that, he admitted, he had gone to the Parkland high school itself for “recon,” watching people outside on a school day and thinking “hmm, interesting.”

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