A US boy has chatted online with the Finnish teenager, who
killed eight and himself dead in a recent high school shooting,
about Columbine massacre, the 1999 campus shooting leaving 13 dead
in Colorado.
A combo picture shows
18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen who killed eight people in Jokela
school in Tuusula, Finland Nov. 7. Auvinen sent a video clip to
YouTube the day before the shooting took place.
The Philadelphian boy, Dillon Cossey, was "horrified" when
hearing about the Finnish attack and said he had never suspected
the Finnish teenager of conducting such a violent act, his attorney
J. David Farrell said on Monday.
The 14-year-old boy was arrested in October for allegedly
preparing an attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in suburban
Philadelphia.
Farrell said that Cossey remembered he communicated online with
the 18-year-old Finnish school shooter, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, about
video games and the Columbine massacre.
"Obviously, Columbine was a shared topic of interest," Farrell
said.
Auvinen shocked the nation on Wednesday by killing six students,
a nurse and the principal in a Tuusula high school before shot
himself in the head.
During the investigation of the first campus massacre in the
nation, Finnish police seized material from Auvinen's computer,
suggesting his link with Cossey. For their part, Pennsylvanian
detectives were also running Auvinen's name through the computer
seized from Cossey.
Plymouth police officers said that they felt no surprise at
Cossey's link with the Finnish school shooter since they had heard
before that Cossey contacted other people through Web sites.
In Cossey's own case, he told a friend that he wanted to conduct
another Columbine massacre.
Following a tip, Pennsylvanian authorities searched his home in
October and found items including a rifle, swords, knives, a
bomb-making book and videos of the Columbine massacre.
Later the month, Cossey admitted to three felonies in Montgomery
County juvenile court and has since then remained in juvenile
custody.
(Xinhua News Agency November 13, 2007)
