



Three first-grade girls in Alaska’s largest city plotted to kill a fellow student and have been disciplined but not charged with any crime, authorities said on Wednesday.

Parents of the 32 first-graders attending Winterberry charter school in Anchorage got word of the plot in a 22 March email from the principal. The three female students acknowledged that they planned to poison a female classmate, school district officials said.

A school resource officer interviewed the girls, and charges will not be filed, police said. The girls had planned to use silica gel packets, which soak up moisture and are not poisonous.

“I’m not sure what we could criminally charge first-graders with,” police spokeswoman Jennifer Castro said, noting that no parents or other adults were involved. “What ended up happening was the officer took each one of them individually, [and] had a very a serious talk with all of them.”

Administrators and school district psychologists talked to the girls to see if they understood what they were trying to do, whether it was a prank gone wrong or if they actually meant to hurt their classmate, school district spokeswoman Heidi Embley said.

“All of these things are being discussed, especially since it’s such a young age,” she said.

The school resource officer determined that the trio intended to harm the other girl, Castro said.

Police say the plot emerged from an ongoing feud but did not release any other details. Two other first-graders told school officials about the plan, and the officer also spoke with them.

The two students reported to administrators that the plan involved using the packets from the girls’ lunch “to poison and kill another student,” principal Shanna Mall wrote in the email.

Police left discipline up to the school district. The email said it entailed “significant consequences.”

Embley said she couldn’t release further details about how the students were punished.

But Mall told Anchorage television station KTUU that the students were suspended. Mall couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday by the Associated Press.



