Brit schoolboys who planned gun and explosives attack on classmates are jailed

TWO teenagers who planned a Columbine-style school massacre in Britain were locked up yesterday for a total of 22 years.

Thomas Wyllie and Alex Bolland, both 15, drew up a hit list of pupils and teachers they intended to shoot dead.

Wyllie even imagined the aftermath, writing in his diary: “If this is found I have committed one of the worst atrocities in British history or I killed myself.”

He and Bolland — both loners at the school in Northallerton, North Yorks — claimed they were seeking revenge for bullying.

But twisted plot mastermind Wyllie hated authority figures and was obsessed with serial killers and blood-thirsty films.

Bolland boasted of their plan in a text to a pupil saying: “You know we’re gonna do this school shooting . . . don’t take it as a joke.”

The pair downloaded a bomb-making manual to make a device like the one that killed 22 people at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in May last year.

They intended to torture and murder the parents of Wyllie’s girlfriend and steal her dad’s shotguns.

After lying low at a hideout where they had stashed screws and flammable liquid to make a nail bomb, they would attack the school.

The pair were obsessed with Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, who killed 12 students and a teacher in the Columbine High School, Colorado, in April 1999.

Wyllie and Bolland were found guilty of conspiracy to murder at Leeds crown court in May.

Neither showed any emotion yesterday as judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said: “You were only 14 when you planned to murder teachers and pupils.”

She locked up Wyllie for 12 years and Bolland for ten.