Classmates React to Arrest of Accused Russell County Bomb Maker
A Russell County high school teacher uncovered what is being called a terror plot when she found a misplaced journal in the classroom. Authorities rushed in discovered the beginnings of improvised explosives in the house of Derek Shrout, 17.
Police said he calls himself a white supremacist and he wanted to harm other students.
Classmates said they noticed a change in the suspect’s behavior in the weeks leading up to his arrest.
Shrout moved to Alabama from Kansas a year ago with his military family now stationed at Fort Benning. The Russell County sheriff says Shrout was active in school and on the same day he was charged with planning a racially motivated attack on students, he was in the guidance counselor’s office discussing his transfer credits.
“At first through JROTC, he was confident, well-rounded, but as time went by, he was doing the whole white power thing,” said senior class president, David Kelly.
Kelly was also Shrout’s battalion commander in the school’s JROTC program. His friends said with the way he was acting around the school, they’re not surprised he got himself into trouble.
“I saw that he was taking it more serious than anything, he started getting real deep into it, and he had a little group of people doing it with him. S