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Published April 22, 2006 12:00 am - RIVERTON, Kan. - Riverton High School sophomore Michaela Ferneau did not take seriously what former boyfriend James Tillman told her in January until this past week. Girl tells of alleged school plot The Joplin Globe By Jeff Lehr
Globe Staff Writer RIVERTON, Kan. - Riverton High School sophomore Michaela Ferneau did not take seriously what former boyfriend James Tillman told her in January until this past week. "He told me not to go to school on 4/20, and that there might be another Columbine," Ferneau told the Globe in a telephone interview on Friday. Five students, including Tillman, were taken into custody Thursday in an investigation into an alleged plot to commemorate the anniversary of the Columbine school shootings in Colorado with a similar violent rampage at the Riverton school. None of those detained had been charged by Friday night. Tillman and sophomore Caleb Byrd were named on orders granting writs of habeus corpus filed by their attorneys. Three of them remain unnamed in the public record. One of the students is a senior. The other four are sophomores, according to several students at the school. Ferneau said she believed Tillman was just joking when he made the remark to her in January. But, events at school this week, coupled with her memory of his veiled reference to a possible plot, began worrying her to the point that she indirectly set in motion, via the Internet, a chain of communications that led to the detention of the Riverton High School senior and four sophomores, she said. Ferneau said on Tuesday a teacher overheard one or more of the boys say something that the teacher then took to school administrators. Superintendent David Walters has said that school officials began looking into a message posted on the Web site MySpace.com on Tuesday. Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Norman has said the message noted the significance of April 20, the date of the Columbine shootings in 1999 and Adolf Hitler's birthday, and stated that there would be a shooting at Riverton High School and students should wear bulletproof vests and flak jackets. The sheriff also has said that school officials began questioning the student who posted the message and talking to other students about it on Tuesday and Wednesday. Ferneau said by Wednesday rumors about the posted message and a possible shooting plot were circulating through the high school. She said one student told her they'd heard she was involved and was believed to be one who was going to do the shooting. Another student told her she was an intended target, she said. The rumors bothered her enough that she went to Cory White, the school's assistant principal, about noon Wednesday and told him she had nothing to do with the matter, that she did not intend to shoot anyone and did not wish to be shot herself. She said she was so troubled by it all Wednesday that after she got home from school she sent an instant message by computer to a girlfriend in North Carolina whom she'd met over the Internet. She explained to the girlfriend what was troubling her, and the girlfriend encouraged her to tell someone about it all, Ferneau said. 
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