Three Upstate New York middle school students were arrested last weekend for planning a school shooting in the cafeteria of Clinton Middle School at lunch tomorrow (4/17/2026). The two girls and one boy had access to dozens of weapons, ammo, and were plotting the attack for months.
The names of the three students have not been released so for simplicity in my explanation of their plot, I will refer to them a 13F (13-year-old girl), 14F (14-year-old girl), and 13M (13-year-old boy). A fourth 14-year-olds student who was not arrested will be identified as 14U.
“No one would be spared. Everyone and their pathetic little lifes will be gone. I want to be remembered in the worst, most disturbing possible way.” -14F’s journal
14F was the ringleader and named the group “The Cal Gabriel Fan Club” after the fictional main character in the 2002 movie “Zero Day” about planning a school shooting. In the movie Zero Day, the main characters commit a school shooting in the cafeteria at lunch time (just like 14F’s plot).
In her journal 14F wrote that the shooting would be a way to make bullies feel her pain. 14F’s mother told police she became obsessed with the 1999 Columbine school shooting and had written messages about Adam Lanza. Her recent internet searches included guns, how to pick the lock to a gun safe, and infamous school shooters.
While there are lots of school shooting plots that involve multiple students, most of these multi-assailant attacks are detected before they happen. When there are multiple students involved, the changes of a classmate or parent overhearing something and making a tip significantly increases. In one of the most famous scenes from The Wire, Stringer Bell yells at one of his drug dealers for taking notes on a criminal conspiracy. More people involved in a crime increases the chance of getting caught!
That’s exactly what happened in Clinton, NY. 13F told other classmates about the school shooting plot including showing them her writings and planning documents. 13F admitted to police that she planned to participate in the attack and had a mutual suicide pact with 14F. When 13F started to get nervous about the plan, 14F threatened to kill her during the shooting. A suicide pact between the shooters is also part of the plot of Zero Day.
13M frequently talked to 14F about guns and offered her weapons from his home. When police arrested 13M, 11 rifles and ammo were seized from the boy’s mother’s home. 14U also offered to give 14F access to firearms at his house that were voluntarily surrendered to police by his father during the investigation. More than a dozen firearms were stored in the basement of 14F’s home.
Zero Day and TCC
Only three years after Columbine, the aftermath of our nation’s worst school shooting met the 'Blair Witch Project' in a $20k budget indie film about two kids plotting a school shooting. Zero Day (2002) was a box office bomb with only $8,466 in ticket sales. Two decades later, some free and open access versions posted on YouTube have more than 1,000,000 views. When it was released on VHS back in 2003, both the Japanese and British governments blocked full versions from being sold in their countries.
Zero Day was way ahead of its time before the “school shooter” genre was so easily recognizable. The post-Columbine era of both villainizing and romanticizing mass shooters has created a culture template for how these monsters look, dress, talk, and perform acts of violence. It feels so unsettling to watch this film because the characters are more recognizable in retrospect, almost like the warning signs that get missed before real world attacks happen.
The premise is two suburban high school students, Andre and Cal, use a home video camera to record months of video diaries (vlogs in today’s smartphone world) as they prepare for “Zero Day” when they will commit a school shooting. There’s no orchestral score, no stylized violence or special effects, and no omniscient adult perspective or narrator imposed on the narrative. The movie is just two kids, a shaky camera, and a long build-up showing the mundane process and teen banter as they plan that attack.