CLINTON -- Police arrested a Clinton High School senior on a felony charge Thursday, and said he had been compiling a list of classmates and had talked about shooting people at graduation. He also recently had put an AR-15-style rifle on layaway, police said.
Jacob Carrigan, 18, of Shirley is charged with one count of falsely making a terrorist threat and is being held in the Van Buren County jail pending his first appearance in court, perhaps today, when bail could be set, Van Buren County Sheriff Scott Bradley said.
The school's police resource office learned Monday that Carrigan had been "going around and asking other students if they thought he was rude and then marking a list yes or no," the sheriff's office said in a news release.
Officers also spoke with several people, including Carrigan's former girlfriend, and learned he had reportedly said, "wouldn't it be funny if I showed up at graduation and started shooting," the release said.
In an interview, Bradley said Carrigan "doesn't really seem to understand why he's in so much trouble."
"We're going to err on the side of caution," Bradley added. "We're taking it serious. ... It looks like he was planning something."
According to a police affidavit filed with the felony charge Thursday, one student told police that when he told Carrigan that he didn't think Carrigan was rude, Carrigan replied, "Okay, you're safe [then]" as Carrigan placed a mark by that student's name in the "no" column.
Carrigan later acknowledged making that statement "once or twice to a student," the affidavit added. When asked what such students were safe from, "He said he really didn't know, he just said it," the affidavit said.
Another student who works at a pawn-and-gun shop told police that Carrigan had visited it during the past two weeks and had put the AR-15-style rifle into layaway, the affidavit said. He also said he'd thrown the list away last week, it said.
Carrigan told police he'd always wanted that kind of rifle and had placed a down payment on one at the shop.
"He went on to tell me about the various styles of AR-15's, how they operated, and the different capacity of the magazines that were available," the officer wrote in the affidavit.
Carrigan denied making any threatening statements to students and "did not seem to understand why these events were such a big deal," the affidavit added.
Carrigan's former girlfriend told police that she couldn't remember the exact wording but said he had told her "something like 'hey, wouldn't it be funny if I showed up to graduation and started shooting?' She told him that it would not be funny, and he replied, 'true,'" the affidavit said.
The girl told a teacher that Carrigan said at one point that he should carry in a gun to shoot everyone on his list who had answered yes, according to the affidavit.
Carrigan was escorted to his vehicle and allowed to leave the campus that day because there was no evidence "of a direct threat" at that point, the affidavit said. Carrigan was told not to return to school until he was notified.
Online court documents in Carrigan's case did not list a defense attorney as of late Thursday.
State Desk on 04/08/2016