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Alabama 

Teen White-Supremacist Plotted To Bomb School In Hate Crime Attack

Derel Shrout * Booking Photo
via Russell County Sheriff's Office

PHENIX CITY, AL -- Derek Shrout, a 17 year old self-proclaimed white-supremacist, has been released on a $75,000 bond Monday evening after being arrested Friday for his plans to kill six students and a teacher in a bomb plot. Five of the intended victims were African-American, while one was gay.

Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said that the plot was uncovered after a Russell County High School faculty member found a journal in her classroom detailing Shrout's plans to terrorise his school.

Sheriff Taylor told local media outlets that his office fully intends to pursue hate crime charges against Shrout noting:

"That's the reason the white male was on the list- (Shrout believed the intended victim was gay)it screams hate crime."

According to the local news station, WTVM channel 9, classmates said they noticed a change in the suspect's behavior in the weeks leading up to his arrest.

Shrout moved to Alabama from Kansas a year ago with his military family now stationed at nearby Fort Benning across the state line in Georgia.  The Russell County sheriff says Shrout was active in school and on the same day he was charged with planning a racially motivated attack on students, he was in the guidance counselor's office discussing his transfer credits.

"At first through JROTC, he was confident, well-rounded, but as time went by, he was doing the whole white power thing," said senior class president, David Kelly. 

Kelly was also Shrout's battalion commander in the school's JROTC program.  His friends said with the way he was acting around the school, they're not surprised he got himself into trouble. 

"I saw that he was taking it more serious than anything, he started getting real deep into it, and he had a little group of people doing it with him. So, I thought it was getting to where I shouldn't be around it, so I started not even hanging out with him for a long time," said JROTC 1st Sgt. David White
Kelly explained that Shrout would frequently give Nazi salutes at school.  He said, "In the hallway, at breakfast, at the lunch tables, after school where we have our bus parking lot, he'd have his big old group of friends and they'd go around doing the whole white power crazy stuff."  

Besides disagreeing with his views on white supremacy and wanting to harm other students, they question his intentions on the most fundamental level. 

"Why would you want to go to a school and blow it up?  You know you're going to hit somebody else; you're not just going to, in particular, hit one person.  You're going to injure more than one," said White.

Sheriff's deputies found over 25 tobacco tins in Derek Shrout's house that they said he was in the process of converting into grenades.  Authorities believe he was becoming involved with an organized neo-Nazi group and he learned how to make explosives through internet research.

In his statements to police, Shrout claimed his writings are a work of fiction and he never intended to go through with an attack on the school. 

Shrout was arraigned Monday on felony charges of attempted assault. Judge Albert Johnson set the following conditions for Shrout's bail: He must remain at home; wear a GPS locator bracelet on his ankle; refrain from initiating contact with anyone connected to the school; and be monitored by a parent while on the Internet. Johnson scheduled Shrout’s preliminary hearing for Feb. 12 at 9 a.m.
The Sheriff's office confirmed that Shrout posted bail Monday evening.