Teen Charged In Bomb Plot Wanted To Show ‘I Wasn’t A Wimp’

A Minnesota teenager planned to blow up his school and kill his family. He said he didn’t plan to survive. All this “just to show I wasn’t a wimp.”

In audio recordings released Tuesday, John LaDue, 17, appeared calm as he described plans to set off bombs in his Waseca, Minnesota, school hallways.

“I was not bullied at all,” he told the police. “I don’t think I’ve ever been bullied in my life. I have good parents. I live in a good town. I think I’m just really mentally ill. And no one’s noticed, and I’ve been trying to hide it.”…

The woman credited with stopping the attack was washing dishes when she said she saw LaDue cutting through her backyard to get to a storage facility. She said she watched him fiddle with the lock for 10 minutes.

She called the police, who found three fully functional bombs, bomb-making material, gunpowder, guns and ammunition in the storage locker in LaDue’s home south of Minneapolis.

D.B. Hirsch

D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.