Five Flowing Wells High School students, including four juveniles, arrested after police said they planned to kill a fellow student will not face murder conspiracy charges, the Pima County Attorney's Office said Friday.
"We have determined that the evidence gathered during the course of this investigation is insufficient to establish that there was any actual concrete agreement between the students that a murder would really take place," the office said in news release. "There is evidence that the students speculated and talked about a number of different ways in which another student might possibly be killed, but there was no agreement about the manner in which they intended to actually carry out a killing, nor was there discussion about who might actually commit the murder, or when or where it might occur."
Police and school administrators said a student contacted a school official about the alleged plot and police were notified. Police conducted an investigation and four students were arrested on campus, and one student was arrested at home. One of the students was found to have a knife on campus, authorities said last week.
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Authorities said at the time that this was not a random of act of violence being planned and that all the students involved knew each other.
Police arrested Christopher Gibson, 18; Anastasia Lakin, 17; Jessica Good, 17; Gabriel Quiroga, 15; and Andrew Totten, 15. Each was booked on suspicion of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Prosecutors said Friday that to "prove the charge of conspiracy to commit first degree murder, sufficient evidence must exist for the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an explicit agreement existed between or among the students that one or more of them would actually commit the murder."
"There is no evident that any agreement or consensus was reached about actually carrying out a plan or plot to commit the murder," the office said. "Additionally, they each disclosed they had no serious intention to act on their hypothetical conversations."
The office said the student who had a knife regularly carried a knife on campus and often kept it in his locker. Prosecutors are reviewing whether to file charges against the student for carrying a knife on campus.
"While it is certainly highly disturbing and extremely alarming that teenagers would even engage in conversations such as these directed at a classmate, there is a clear lack of substantial evidence to prove that an agreement or intent to actually commit murder existed," the office said.
