A North Carolina college student was allegedly plotting to “shoot up” his school — with cops catching him with a pistol and shotgun on campus this week, officials said.
Paul Arnold Steber, a 19-year-old freshman at High Point University, admitted during police interviews that he wanted to “kill people” and had a “plan and timeline” of attack, according to authorities.
He was caught on campus Tuesday with a shotgun, 9mm handgun and packs of ammunition, said High Point Police on Wednesday.
Officers allegedly found the weapons inside of Steber’s dorm room.
The Boston native was taken into custody and charged with two felony counts of weapons on campus or other educational property and one count of communicating a threat of mass violence on educational property. He was being held Wednesday on a $2 million bond for the weapons charges and $1 million for the threat of violence.
News of Steber’s arrest — which comes just weeks after the Dayton and El Paso shootings — left HPU students shaken.
“It’s one thing to hear about it at another school or something like that, but you never feel it’s going to happen where you go to school, right here where you live and go to class every day,” HPU junior Colton Zenni told WGHP. “It’s pretty disconcerting to think something like that could really happen anywhere. It could happen on your own campus.”
Steber was brought to the attention of cops by a fellow student, according to officials.
“This incident illustrates the importance of the public reporting suspicious activity to authorities,” police said. “Information from the public is often the critical first step in preventing acts of mass violence. For details on recognizing the signs of suspicious activity, visit the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” campaign website.”