HALIFAX — The co-conspirators in the foiled Valentine’s Day shooting plot at a Halifax mall admired the Columbine killers and hoped to themselves inspire other mass shootings, a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge heard Monday.
“They both expressed enthusiasm for the pain/death they were going to cause,” according to an agreed statement of facts presented at a sentencing hearing for 26-year-old Lindsay Souvannarath of Geneva, Illinois.
“They both deeply desired to achieve infamy and notoriety through the mass killing of others.
“They revelled in thinking about the pain and anguish their families would feel at their horrendous act. They hoped their massacre would inspire others to do the same.”
Souvannarath pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder last April, several months after Randall Steven Shepherd — a Halifax man described in court as the “cheerleader” of the shooting plot — was sentenced to a decade in jail.
A third alleged conspirator, 19-year-old James Gamble, was found dead in his Halifax-area home a day before the planned attack on the Halifax Shopping Centre.
The statement says Souvannarath and Gamble met online four days before the previous Christmas and discovered they both admired the Columbine massacre.
“Souvannarath and Gamble repeatedly stated that they were adopting the personas of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, respectively. They would often refer to each other by the nicknames of Harris (Reb) and Klebold (VoDKa),” the agreed statement said.
“They would quote passages to each other from the publicly accessible journals of Harris and Klebold.”
Full article: thechronicleherald.ca