A Utah teenager arrested last year in a plot to blow up his high school was on Tuesday eliminated in the race for mayor of a small Utah city.
Results released by officials on Tuesday evening showed 18-year-old Joshua Hoggan received less than 5 percent of the vote in the primary, preventing him from moving on as a candidate on the ballot in the Roy, Utah, mayoral race.
Roy Mayor Joe Ritchie and councilor Willard Cragun moved into a face-off in the Nov. 5 election.
Hoggan pleaded guilty last year to possession of a weapon of mass destruction and spent six months in juvenile detention. Police said that Hoggan, then 16, and an older classmate at Roy High School spent months plotting an attack inspired by the 1999 shootings at a high school in Columbine, Colorado.
Their plan included a detailed plot, school blueprints and a plan to fly away after the bombing, said investigators, who never found a bomb.
A classmate tipped off the authorities after receiving text messages from Hoggan, who bragged that he planned to steal a plane from a nearby airport. The boy had logged hundreds of hours on a flight simulator program to prepare.
Hoggan’s classmate, Dallin Morgan, pleaded guilty to criminal mischief and was given a 105-day jail sentence.
Hoggan said he recognized what he did was wrong, and he was rehabilitated and prepared to lead the city of about 37,000 people north of Salt Lake City. He insisted he never had any intent to bomb the school.
“People should trust me because I have proven one thing: That I am human,” Hoggan said in an e-mail before the election. “I have made mistakes, just like the rest of us. We’ve all made mistakes in our pasts and I am no exception.”
He faced off in Tuesday’s primary against Ritchie and Cragun. Most considered Hoggan a long shot to get through the nonpartisan primary, in which voters chose two candidates from a pool of three to advance to the election. Ritchie has been mayor for eight years and Cragun a councilor for six years.
Ritchie said Hoggan had every right to be on the ballot, but he questioned his motives and whether he is truly rehabilitated. He said many in Roy are still shaken by Hoggan’s bombing plan and are perplexed why he was in the race.
“I’m not so sure how sincere he is,” said Ritchie, who has never met Hoggan. “I think he’s in it for the notoriety.”
Hoggan has just completed his first semester at Weber State University in Ogden, where he is studying political science with hopes to have a career in the political realm.
Hoggan said he was misguided in high school. His meeting with the Columbine principal was for research for an article about school security for his high-school newspaper, he said.
Roy High School officials knew about the meeting prior to him traveling to Colorado, he said.
He did not seek out the attention that has come with his bid for mayor, he said, but seized the opportunity to let residents get to know him better.
“I think that, if nothing else, the citizens of Roy City used a valuable opportunity to have their concerns addressed,” Hoggan wrote in the e-mail.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not