June 6 (UPI) -- The FBI derailed a plot by a teenager who had planned to detonate a bomb at a Washington state shopping mall and shoot people as they fled a movie theater in the building, law enforcement authorities announced Thursday.
The FBI arrested a juvenile male from Columbia County on May 22 on state charges after executing a search warrant on his residence, but did not release his name.
Officials say the teen had planned to carry out the attack at the Three Rivers Crossing in Kelso, Wash, about 50 miles north of Portland along Interstate 5. The mall includes a mix of national retailers such as JCPenney, Target and Safeway and local business, including Regal Cinemas, local media reported.
The FBI said the teen had a small map of the mall and written plans that show he planned to use a chlorine bomb to cause an explosion that would force movie-goers to run from the building when he planned to shoot them them take his own life, the FBI said in a statement.
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"This plot is as serious as it gets," Douglas Olson, special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office, said.
Olson said the agency received a tip on May 19 that someone had posted "detailed and imminent attack plans" to an online chat forum related to the mall attack. By the next day, agents had identified a suspect and executed a search warrant on his home in Columbia County.
Olson said the FBI found "annotated schematics," the weapons the teen planned to use in the attack and the clothes he would wear, what he called "an alarming number of indicators" that suggested the teem planned to follow through on his plan.
Olson said the teen had pledged allegiance to online "nihilistic violent extremist groups and ideologies and that he had been planning the attack since early this year.
