County Attorney won't charge students in alleged Flowing Wells plot

Five Flowing Wells High School students arrested last week for allegedly planning to kill another student won't face murder conspiracy charges, authorities said Friday. The Pima County Attorney's Office announced that there is not sufficient evidence to prove the students plotted to murder a fellow student.

"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," prosecutors said in a news release.

'Given the numerous outlandish plans discussed, it appears that the students had no actual intent to carry out the murder' — County Attorney

The five were arrested last Wednesday, after Tucson police began investigating when a student told school staff that several students were planning to kill another student on campus, a Tucson Police Department spokesman said.

But prosecutors won't move ahead with formal charges.

"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," said a release from the County Attorney's Office.

"Given the numerous outlandish plans discussed, it appears that the students had no actual intent to carry out the murder," the statement said. "Additionally, given that each professed they were not serious about committing the murder and had no intention of acting out any of the scenarios they discussed, evidence to prove otherwise, is non-existent."

TPD initially said that all five were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and booked into the Pima County Jail. Arrested were an 18-year-old suspect, and two girls, both 17 years old, and two 15-year-old boys. After first identifying only the 18-year-old, TPD released the names and mug shots of the four juvenile suspects, saying that they would all be charged as adults in the alleged plot.

Those names and IDs were widely reported across other local media. As it is generally TucsonSentinel.com policy to not identify juveniles charged with crimes, this news organization withheld the names of the underage students.

Although the five discussed the killing of a fellow student, an investigation found there that no "explicit agreement existed between or among the students that one or more of them would actually commit the murder," PCAO said.

One of the students allegedly involved brought a knife to school, which was found by school staff, authorities said last week

But investigators said Friday that "although one of the students involved possessed a knife at school, evidence revealed that the student carried that knife to school on a regular basis or most days kept it in his locker, and it was not specifically brought for the purpose of carrying out a murder"