Bartlesville teen convicted in school attack plot

The seven-woman, fiveman jury recommended he serve 30 months in prison and pay a $5,000 fine. Sentencing is set Nov. 12.

“I think what we have proven to you all is that Sammie Chavez was absolutely obsessed with the idea of fellow students dying,” District Attorney Kevin Buchanan told the jury in his closing argument.

The jury had the option of convicting Chavez of two similar charges. Jurors chose the charge with the wording of “devising a plan” to cause harm over the charge that stated he was planning, attempting or conspiring to commit an act of violence. The maximum sentence allowed for each charge is 10 years.

Bartlesville attorney Jim Conatser, court-appointed to represent Chavez, had urged the jury to be lenient in its sentencing of the offense.

“I would hope that when you weigh everything that you would decide what you have heard is not worth 10 years of his life,” Conatser said.

The verdict came after Chavez testified in his own defense and said he was “joking” when he talked to his classmates about how a school shooting could be carried out on their campus.

Chavez said he was not serious about wanting to kill his classmates when he discussed a school shooting and bombing plot, purchased a gun and wrote journal entries about killing people.

“It was a joke in the sense that it wasn’t meant seriously,” Chavez told jurors.

Chavez has been jailed since his Dec. 14 arrest on a charge of planning a mass school shooting and bombing in Bartlesville.

Jurors heard testimony Monday from a high school student who said Chavez had been talking in the cafeteria about wanting to lure students into the school auditorium, chain the doors shut and begin shooting.

Testimony on Tuesday also included Bartlesville police officers Jacob Moran and Lt. Kevin Ickleberry who talked of finding Chavez’s journal about killings in his jeans pocket, a table with “murder” written on it repeatedly and the computer hard drive on which the former student had researched mass school shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech University.

Much of the testimony on both sides focused on Chavez’s journal entries in which he talks about “what he has been planning for so long” and discusses how he would “be remembered forever.”

Chavez talks in the journal pages, which were dated Dec. 3-6, 2012, of how “these thoughts of hurting and killing others have become comforting.”

Chavez told the court he was just journaling to express his anger and the notes were not a serious plan to kill others.

“It was just me being really angry and writing anything down that came into my head,” Chavez said. Chavez described himself as “fairly popular” at school and testified that he had lots of friends. He said all of the evidence against him was “an unfortunate coincidence.”

Ickleberry testified about the furniture dubbed “the murder table” by Chavez’s family. On it are names and dates with the word “murder” written by them. One entry that states “9-19-12 Murder Barbie” also has near it a drawing and the words “Peek-A-Boo, I’ll chop you.” Ickleberry said the dates and reference correspond to the murder of a Wisconsin woman named Barbara who was hacked to death with hatchets by 13-year-olds.

Another date on the table 9-25-12 corresponds with the national day of remembrance for murder victims, Ickleberry said.

Chavez told the court his friend had written the words on the table and it was all coincidental that the dates corresponded with a murder.

Ickleberry noted the hard drive from Chavez’s school computer showed abundant research into bombs and weapons, along with the mass killings in Colorado and Virginia.

“We found that there were 13,000 hits on the word bomb on that computer,” Ickleberry said. “We also found quite a few hits on the word rifle.”

Buchanan drew the jury toward Chavez’s journal notes to show he had been planning an act of violence for some time. Notes in which Chavez said “Those who deserve to die will be killed. Those who don’t yet know our cause will be forced to witness it.”

“Between the computer research, between his handwritten notes, the murder table — it’s all-consuming,” Buchanan said. “Sammie was consumed with violence. That’s the consuming idea and now he’s acquiring guns. I believe what we have given you is some irrefutable evidence.”

Original Print Headline: B’ville ex-student convicted