WAYCROSS, Ga. (AP) - A group of children ages 8 to 10 apparently were mad at their teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair, authorities say.

That led the third-graders, as many as nine boys and girls, to plot an attack on the teacher at Center Elementary School in south Georgia.

Police Chief Tony Tanner said the students apparently planned to knock the teacher unconscious with a glass paperweight, bind her with handcuffs and duct tape and then stab her with a broken steak knife.

The scheme involved a division of roles, Tanner said. One child's job was to cover windows so no one could see outside, and another was supposed to clean up after the attack.

"We're not sure at this point in the investigation how many of the students actually knew the intent was to hurt the teacher," Tanner said.

School officials had alerted police Friday after a pupil tipped off a teacher that a girl had taken a weapon to school.

Tanner said the teacher told detectives the children weren't known as troublemakers.

"You can't dismiss it," Tanner said. "But because they are kids, they may have thought this was like a cartoon - we do whatever and then she stands up and she's OK. That's a hard call."

The purported target teaches third-grade students with learning disabilities, including attention deficit disorder, delayed development and hyperactivity, friends and parents said.

Two of the students were arrested on juvenile charges Tuesday and a third arrest was expected. District Attorney Rick Currie said other students told investigators they didn't take the plot seriously or insisted they had decided not to participate.

"Some of the kids said, `We thought they were just kidding,"' Currie said. "Another child was supposed to bring a toy pistol, and he told a detective he didn't bring it because he thought he would get in trouble."

Currie said the children are too young to be charged as adults, and probably too young to be sentenced to a youth detention center.

"We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely," Tanner said. "We feel like if they weren't interrupted, there would have been an attempt. Would they have been successful? We don't know."

Currie said he decided to seek juvenile charges against two girls, ages 9 and 10, who brought the knife and paperweight and an 8-year-old boy who brought tape. He said they face charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and both girls are being charged with taking weapons to school.

Nine children have been given discipline up to and including long-term suspension, said Theresa Martin, spokeswoman for the Ware County school system. She would not be more specific but said none of the children had been back to school since the case came to light.

School system policy says any student who brings "anything reasonably considered to be a weapon" is to be expelled for at least the remainder of the school year.


(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Well they will get away with a slap on the wrist. They are a good exaple of whats wrong with this country.

I agree. Attempting murder, no matter how old, should land them in jail.

Ditto .

This might be a bit of a genaralisation, but im pretty sure kids of 8 - 10 realise that life is not like a cartoon.

we need to see about lowering the age at which people can be put in jail...

My daughter is in 3rd grade! I can't imagine any of her classmates wanting to do such a thing. Too many video games with killing on them. Makes kids think 'it's just a game'. I pray for the children's families and that poor teacher. She can't possibly still be teaching them! What is our world coming to?!?!?!?!?!?!?

As a former third grade teacher, this one hurt. I was very tough on my third graders, but do not remember one incident where any ill will was pointed my way. It basically came down to the parents. My students had wonderful parents who sometimes had trouble understanding my stance, but would come to see me, not sit at home and concentrate on hate. These children were eight years old and the only trouble I had out of them the whole year was not with work, or even homework. It was during playtime and lining up to go to the bathroom, lunch etc... but that is what being a child brings, childish behavior. This behavior was far, far from childish, which means they learned it from an outside force, via their parents, the internet, television. I am teaching at the middle school this year doing half the day for special education and half the day for in school detention while I finish my masters this semester. Those third graders are now here with me and let me tell you, even drunk on hormones, they do not try to pull this trash. This school system has a very good repoir with the parents, thats why I point my finger at them in this incident!

It's more like a total lack of parenting to help these kids understand that video games are only games and real life should never happen that way. Instead too many parents rely on these video games as a babysitter for the kids. Everything in life has become more violent since I was child. Movies have become more graphic, games have moved in a direction that I would have never imagined as a kid. Yes, I think many of the games out there are super cool, but most certainly require extreme parental guidance.

Even the media has moved in a more violent direction. Sometimes I wonder if half the stupid things that people do out there would happen if they never heard about other people doing them first via the media.

When I was eight years old I believed that the prison in my state possessed a special child-sized electric chair.

It's not the video game's fault. It's the parents. They are the ones who purchase the games. I highly doubt a third grader could walk into a store and purchase an M rated game. Seriously, everyone blames todays media -- but what about the media when today's parents were children? Surely there's nothing violent about Tom attempting to kill Jerry every episode, for an entire thirty minutes? I really hate how quickly people label games and stuff to be the cause of child-instigated violence.

Of course, I'm not saying the games and tv shows -- yes, dear people, Spongebob Squarepants could just as easily be an advocate for violence as Spyro the dragon! -- are not giving ideas. I'm saying it's the parent's fault and not the producer's, that today's children get their hands on these sort of things.

This is just disgusting and wrong. This is the kind of sick world we live in. Here is our Future at work !

Well at least they were doing a group assignment. hehe. Na seriously, little punks need a paddling

OMG. Nothing surprises me nowadays. Still, that is very trippy!

lol. I do think something is happening where more and more people just to not recognize the sanctity of another person's life. This is not the first case but maybe the one with the youngest group of kids plotting. Look at that teen in Brazil or the group in Ukraine recently.

And so do thier crack smokeing parents.

Whoaaa, these kids have serious problems. Completely sickening that is. I'm only 16, I have two 5 year old brothers. This just makes me want to keep them from going to school. I don't necessarily agree with what my mother allows them to watch, like Power Rangers for instance. I despise Power Rangers because of the violence my brothers pick up on. I won't allow my brothers to watch the wretched movie in my presence. lol

But jeesh, the parents of the children should be fined, just as much as the children should be placed in an institution for mental disabilities.

I disagree. Their brains have not developed yet. The frontal lobes, responsible for judgment, reasoning, emotional regulation, and impulse control, are not formed until around 17- 24 years of age. They don’t know better.

This is something I find very disturbing----my 3rd grade daughter and her friends were playing at our home the other day and they were all running around saying HIDE HIDE and I asked what game they were playing and my daughter said, "Oh, we're just pretending there is a shooter in the school." I about crapped my pants! We are definitely living in a different world today. Even though Tom and Jerry tried to kill each other, they never did. And as a child I realized it was just a cartoon. When are we as a society going to stop pushing the envelope. The media today has to sensationalize everything and talk about it 24-7. I think I liked it better when there was only 3 tv channels to choose from.

Sign o' the times.

And people say kids these days aren't motivated...


I thought the age that children started developing judgement, reasoning, ect. was 12-14. Granted, I never payed any attention in psychology courses so I could be wrong. But still a few years away from those kids anyways, so power down the kiddie-electric chair.

Lets also think back to an era of not so long ago... when students were taught to hide under their desk during a nuclear attack...

I can assure you that by age eight I sure as blazes knew the difference between life and death and that murder wasn't some kind of parlor game. My brain was developed enough to be aware of that.

To the very best of my knowledge there's never been a murder or even a murder attempt in any of the three grade schools in my old home town, and all three are now well over a century old.

If children are as brain-immature as you seem to indicate, why aren't there dead children and teachers hanging out of the windows and piling up in the schoolyard?

And are you really saying that a 23-year-old murderer "doesn't know any better"?

Or even a bunch of dead two year olds, plenty old enough to handle a knife.
I think right and wrong are set in place by age one pretty much, at least at its most basic level.
There are theories that psychopaths are formed in the first year of life.

I’m sure you did, as well as most 8 year olds. But I’m not talking about knowing life and death. I’m talking about reasoning, emotional regulation, and impulse control. Neuroscientists have shown that the brain undergoes major reconstruction from the onset of puberty which continues until 20 or beyond. I said 17-24 because that’s the average range that it takes. Some kid’s frontal lobes are developed at 16 some at 25, all are different.

Looking back “They don’t know better” was a bad way of putting it. I should have said they don’t have the judgment and impulse control.

Some 23-year-olds don’t know better, some don’t have the impulse control, and some are just plain stupid.

I think you're right on the mark. I've read that even as a pre-schooler future serial murderer Ted Bundy displayed an unholy fascination with sharp knives and hid them under his bed.

honestly, third graders plotting to kill their teacher? While i'm pretty sure they were just joking around, maybe trying to pull a prank on their teacher to scare him/her enough. Why would third graders ever think of this thing, were did they get it from? are their parents with the mafia?

The problem is that the world's set up for the people who DO have the impulsive control.

The 19-year-old guy who shoots up a classroom full of students is going to face 25 years to life in prison and possibly even the death penalty. The fact that he might not have committed such an act at age 29 isn't really going to enter the equation.

Peter Kuerten, the handsome and nattily-dressed "Vampire of Dusseldorf," carried out his first murder at age nine and his last at age 50, with dozens more in the middle. This seems to have had a lot less to do with self-control than that his chosen hobby of slaughtering people gave him pleasure.

No. I'd say thier parents are just as meesed up as the kids.

Hey, I heard about this at school AND I heard about the motive of why these kids wanted their teacher dead. Apparently, the kid who planned the crime got mad when his teacher told him to stop standing on a chair. I'm surprised how an 8-10 year old can actually plot to murder someone.

If you can't see that things have changed tremendously in the past 20-30 years alone, then I am sorry. For one, there was no internet. My senior year in High School was the first class that got to use computers in our community. There was no cable TV, unless you were super rich. My family actually got a sattelite dish to use for a month to try it out. You had to manually go outside and crank it to get to HBO, CInemax, MTV, etc. What a hoot. In fact we only had about 3-4 stations when I was a kid. (oops, that ages me ) Kids just are exposed to soooo much more these days. You can turn on the TV at any time of day and see some sortof violence, sex, swearing. I just wonder when enough will be enough. Imagine the poor parents of the 60's who were all in an uproar over the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. They would cry if they heard some of the words to songs today. The words to some songs are so explicit, it's hard to even listen to the radio. Commercials are even out of control. We saw one the other day for some sex toy for women from KY Jelly. I had to rewind it to make sure I heard it right. Unbelieveable!!! I am trying to raise my 2 children the best way I know how in today's society. I don't buy my kids M rated games, but it's all advertised on TV. It just seems that world is moving at such a fast pace today, I just wonder what will happen when my kids are parents and what they will be complaining about. And I must add that never in my life did I ever feel that Tom and Jerry advocated violence. Now, Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner? That's a whole different story!

Amen to that brother