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Md. Community Seeks Normalcy After Alleged School Shooting Plot Foiled

BALTIMORE (WJZ)-- Just days after the revelation of a chilling plot, a small Maryland community is trying to return to normal.

An honor student remains hospitalized for planning a mass shooting and bombing at her high school.

A lot of people are asking how the incident could happen in the shadow of Camp David.

School officials have called the teenager troubled and say she is now getting the intervention she needs.

The teenager planned to use a gun and bomb making supplies to attack her school, Catoctin High School in Thurmont one week from Wednesday.

Classmates are still trying to make sense of the foiled plot.

"We could always like joke around and everything and you never expected her to do something like that," said one student.

She suffered from mental illness and wrote in her diary she wanted to be the first female to carry out a mass shooting. Luckily, her father discovered the plan and called police.

"There were no indications that there was an issue before the father came forward," said Michael Doerrer of Frederick County Public Schools.

According to the honor student's diary she took inspiration from the Columbine shooters, the teenager who opened fire inside Perry Hall High School five years ago and the teenager behind the Columbia Mall shooting in 2015.

University of Maryland School of Medicine associate professor, Dr. Sharon Hoover, co-directs the Center for School Mental Health.

"We know over 80 percent of individuals who commit those incidents have told somebody else or others are aware that there is something that could potentially occur," Hoover said.

Back in the teenager's Thurmont neighborhood people are hoping for closure.

"Mental illness has a stigma attached, but we must break down the barrier because these are terrible things that happen. With ISIS and all the other crimes in the world, who needs this in the small ideal town," said Belle Grimes, the student's neighbor.

The University of Maryland's Dr. Hoover stresses these types of plots are rare and the young people behind them are usually high achievers who may have recently suffered a loss.

Charges are pending against the teenager behind the plot.

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