By Salvador Hernandez, Los Angeles Times

Officials are touting a young Tennessee gamer as a hero after the boy thwarted a mass shooting allegedly being planned and discussed on a gamer chat site by two teenagers in Tehama County, California.

The two boys, ages 14 and 15, had planned a shooting at Evergreen Institute of Excellence, in the Northern California town of Cottonwood, where they expected to kill up to 100 people, said Tehama County Sheriff Dave Kain during a news conference Tuesday. Before the deadly attack, the two close friends allegedly planned to kill one set of their parents.

“This was serious,” Kain said. “It would have changed our community as a whole.

The two friends allegedly wrote a manifesto for the deadly attack, took photos of themselves in the same clothes and posed as the teenage killers in the 1999 Columbine mass shooting, and spoke in an online game’s chat about the planned shooting.

It was in that game’s chat that a Tennessee boy became aware of the possible attack, and decided to call the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office on the evening of May 9 about the disturbing chat.

Kain said the gamer’s decision to call authorities about the possible attack could have saved lives.

“This young man had the courage and heroic instincts to call our agency and notify us in order to mitigate any possible threat to our citizens and, possibly, our young people,” Kain said.

The gamer provided investigators with the suspect’s gamer tag, contents of the chat, as well as a shared photo one of the suspects posted of them posing like the Columbine school shooters.

Kain said the shared image helped investigators contact school administrators, identify the two students, and take both of them into custody.

“Our investigators took that tip seriously since the beginning,” Kain said.

Investigators served search warrants at the homes of the two suspects, where they found improvised explosive devices they believe were made to use in the school attack. Firearms were also seized, Kain said.

The two friends had planned to go forward with the attack on May 9, but didn’t because one of them backed out, he said. It’s unclear what the motivation for the school shooting was, but Kain said one of the teen suspects talked about being bullied when interviewed by investigators.

The two suspects were booked on suspicion of making criminal threats, possession of a destructive device, manufacturing a destructive device, and conspiracy to commit a felony, Kain said. Investigators are also working with prosecutors and looking at the possibility of a charge of conspiracy to commit mass murder.

The two teens appeared in court Thursday, and were ordered to remain in custody, per a request from the Tehama County District Attorney’s Office, according to a statement from the office.

Kain said sheriff officials have spoken with school administrators to provide additional security at the school, but said the threat was isolated to the two suspects already in custody.

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As a sign of confidence, the sheriff said his son returned to classes at the same middle school on Monday.

Kain declined to offer any details on the underage gamer who reported the threat, but said he and his parents were told they were invited to visit Tehama County to be recognized.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Three Minnesota officers who died since last year’s Peace Officers Memorial Day are being remembered Thursday, along with two who were killed nearly 100 years ago.

Law enforcement officers from around the state take turns standing guard at the Minnesota Peace Officers Memorial on the state Capitol grounds for 24 hours leading up to the Thursday night service.

The names of officers who died since last year’s memorial service are added to ribbons on a Minnesota Law Enforcement Memorial Association flag. This year, they are: Minneapolis Officer Jamal Mitchell, who was shot on May 30; National Park Service Ranger Kevin Grossheim, who drowned in Voyageurs National Park while helping a family; and Red Lake Tribal Police Officer Jesse Branch, who was in a crash when responding to a call.

Laurence Doten (Courtesy of the Minnesota Law Enforcement Memorial Association)

Two law enforcement officers killed in 1930, recently brought to the attention of LEMA, are also being memorialized this year, said Brian Hubbard, the association’s president.

Immigration and Naturalization Service Inspectors Laurence Doten and Lawrence C. Jones were both stationed in Minnesota. They were fatally shot near Emo, Canada, on Aug. 24, 1930.

It’s important to LEMA that people are “recognized like they should be,” Hubbard said Thursday.

Burnsville police officers Matt Ruge and Paul Elmstrand, who were fatally shot in February 2024, were honored at last year’s memorial ceremony.

Commander Damon Bitney, of the Bloomington Police Department, rings a bell for a fallen police officer during a vigil at the Minnesota Peace Officer Memorial on the south grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Their names, along with Mitchell’s and Grossheim’s, were unveiled this week at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., this week. Branch’s name is scheduled to be added to the national memorial for next year’s ceremony.

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By TARA COPP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the U.S. Space Force is moving ahead with plans to pull talent from Air National Guard units to help build up the still new military service — but several governors remain opposed and argue it tramples on their rights to retain control over their state units.

Overall, the plan would affect only 578 service members across six states and the Air National Guard headquarters and augment the Space Force without creating a separate Space Force National Guard — something the service has said would not be efficient because it would be so small.

“We are actively pursuing where do we want our part-time workforce? What type of work do they do?” the head of Space Force, Gen. Chance Saltzman, said Thursday at a POLITICO conference.

The Space Force was established by President Donald Trump in late 2019, during his first term. In the years since, the Air Force has transferred its space missions into the now five-year-old military branch — except for the 578 positions still contained in the Air National Guard, which is part of the Air Force. In the 2025 defense bill, Congress mandated that those positions move over to the Space Force as well.

The transferred service members would be a part-time force like they are now, just serving under the Space Force instead of their state units.

But space missions are some of the most lucrative across the military and private sector and the states that lose space mission service member billets are potentially losing highly valuable part-time workforce members if they have to move away to transfer in to the Space Force.

Last month, the National Governors Association said the transfers violate their right to retain control over their state units.

“We urge that any transfers cease immediately and that there be direct and open engagement with governors,” the Association said in April. The group was not immediately available to comment on Space Force’s plan.

“There’s a lot of concern in the National Guard about these individuals who are highly skilled that want to be in the Guard being transferred out,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin said at an Air Force manpower hearing this week.

The contention between the states and the Space Force has meant the service hasn’t so far been able to approach individual members about transferring in.

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According to the legislation, each National Guard will get the option to either stay with their units — and get re-trained in another specialty — or join the Space Force. Even if they do transfer into the Space Force, their positions would remain located in those same states for at least the next 10 years, according to the 2025 legislation.

The affected personnel include 33 from Alaska, 126 from California, 119 from Colorado, 75 from Florida, 130 from Hawaii, 69 from Ohio and 26 from Air National Guard headquarters.

When you think of places in your community that add to your quality of life, what do you picture?

For most of us, our focus would reasonably be on places close to home that we experience on a regular basis. It would be surprising for someone to express a strong affinity for places where they spend little to no time, such as — say — a cardboard recycling plant on the other side of town. As Saint Paul navigates uncertain times, however, appreciating places that are not literally for our own use and enjoyment is urgently important, especially as concerns about rising residential property taxes continue to mount.

The soon-to-close Smurfit WestRock plant and its surrounding neighborhood are prime examples of places we should learn to love, with great potential to benefit us even more in the future.

Yes, that WestRock plant — the big factory that looms over I-94 at Vandalia, the one with large metal beige walls and front-end loaders pushing around cardboard, the source (at times) of interesting smells. I’m willing to bet you have not set foot in this 25-acre site and it might not factor very highly in what Saint Paul residents value for their quality of life compared to local shops, streets, and parks.

And yet! That facility, like other commercial and industrial areas, is an economically productive place for our city. It has quietly paid property taxes that reduce the property tax burden on homeowners in Saint Paul for decades. It has provided union jobs for hundreds of workers in our community and the surrounding area. And it has recycled waste paper (maybe even yours) into new cardboard. As we process the news of its closure, awareness and gratitude for those indirect contributions is warranted.

But why stop there? Is learning to love a factory a pathway to an entire world of gratitude for things that are not specifically for you or me, but underpin a thriving city? I hope so.

A thriving elementary school on the East Side doesn’t serve my kids, but my family benefits from that corner of the city being a stronger community. A market-rate housing project on the West Side stabilizes housing prices and reduces my property tax burden. The affordable housing project across town helps other people’s neighbors be able to afford housing. If a business leases space in a downtown office tower, we all benefit. The bike lane on the North End I’ll never ride on, the constituent service in a ward I don’t live in, the community ed class I don’t want to take, you name it. We rise and fall together through all of these indirect benefits.

And even if I lost you on some of those intangible benefits, the case for a healthy commercial and industrial tax base in Saint Paul should make itself for anyone who pays property taxes.

Saint Paul is famously a city of neighborhoods, and we can live in our own little worlds. All of those little worlds will succeed more if we support the commercial and industrial areas that punch above their weight for our city economically.

The WestRock plant sits in one such place, Saint Paul’s official Creative Enterprise Zone (CEZ), on the western edge of the city between the railway, Fairview Avenue, and I-94. As the organization of the same name, we champion this area as a place for creative work, which it has quietly been for decades. We recently completed a study of how and how much this neighborhood has changed since the Green Line was opened in 2014. Even if the CEZ is not literally your neighborhood, its success over the last decade is good news for you.

While the CEZ is only 3.1% of the city by area, its contributions to the city are consistently higher:

— 16% of the city’s total residential growth over the last decade (1,951 new housing units 2014-2024).
— 16,185 jobs, or 8.8% of the city’s employment overall.
— CEZ properties pay 6.5% of the property taxes overall, which is less than the 8.7% paid by properties downtown but still considerable.

As our city continues to evolve, don’t sleep on places like the Creative Enterprise Zone as drivers of future growth of Saint Paul’s tax base. Our analysis shows that as properties have redeveloped, the property values per acre have increased. Even better, we have underutilized land that could be even more productive for the broader city. Change is good. If you are curious to learn more about this study, we will be sharing the full results at an event on May 30 at NewStudio Gallery, in partnership with Towerside Innovation District and SRF.

Specifically for the WestRock site, while the loss of 189 jobs and the closure of a large recycling facility is disappointing, the redevelopment potential here is immense. The employment and property taxes of the site have been considerably lower on a per-acre basis than other areas of the CEZ. The site is a block away from the Raymond Avenue Station of the Green Line, which has been the driver of our area’s residential growth. The neighborhood is growing as a cultural destination, with new facilities like the Playwrights’ Center and FilmNorth under construction, and the new MidCity Farmers Market that started just last year. It is adjacent to the future route of the Midtown Greenway Extension, and just over a half mile from the Mississippi River.

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As the dust settles from the announcement of the impending WestRock closure, we look forward to advocating for a future at the site that builds on the success the CEZ has enjoyed over the last decade. Few corners of our city are as ripe for renewal as ours, and we want to grow and change to do our part to sustain the city overall — both directly and indirectly.

Ben Shardlow, chairs the board of the Creative Enterprise Zone and lives in St. Paul within smelling distance of WestRock. More details on the May 30th event he refers to above are at www.creativeenterprisezone.org/events/cez-spring-showcase