An Alabama student is to face court after police uncovered what they said was a plot to kill a gay teacher and six students using homemade explosives.

Derek Shrout, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, was arrested on Friday 5 January after a teacher at Russell County High School discovered what appeared to be his journal, containing plans to kill a gay teacher, and six students, using homemade grenades, reports ABC News.

Out of the seven people on his list, six were black, and police believed that the 17-year-old thought the one white male was noted because the accused thought he was gay.

“That’s the reason the white male was on the list. It screams hate crime,” Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said. He continued:

“The journal contained several plans that looked like potential terrorist attacks and attacks of violence and danger on the school.”

Police raided the home of the accused after the teacher found the journal, and discovered dozens of empty tobacco tins filled with shrapnel, with holes left for fuses.

The accused had not obtained gunpowder, fuses or a substance to ignite the devices, but police said he had learned how to make the weapons on the internet.

Mr Shrout is expected to plead not guilty, and had claimed that the plans uncovered by police were a work of fiction, and that he had rarely interacted with the people named in the journal.

Police investigators said that he only started writing in the journal on 14 December, just three days after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The accused is being charged as an adult with attempted assault.