Grant Parish, LA – Deputies have arrested three junior high school students who were planning a school shooting in Grant Parish.

The Grant Parish Sheriff’s Office said they had arrested three 13-year-old students from Grant Junior High who had been overheard by another student discussing their plans, according to KALB.

Grant Parish Sheriff Steven McCain said two boys and one girl had been charged with terrorizing, KALB reported.

Sheriff McCain said the student who overheard their classmates’ planning conversation had reported it to authorities, and the sheriff’s office immediately investigated.

The sheriff said that as a result of the investigation, authorities intervened and all three involved students had been taken into custody before they were able to act out their plan, KALB reported.

Sheriff McCain said the junior high students’ plans to commit a school shooting were in response to a problem they were having with bullying.

“It wasn’t a joke,” the sheriff told KALB. “It stemmed from bullying.”

“What we have learned in school shootings across America that is what is causing the majority of them,” he said. “Kids are just… ‘I’m just fed up, I’m tired of being picked on and made fun of.’ They think this is an option.”

The sheriff told KALB that the students weren’t targeting anyone specific with their attack.

“It was going to be random. There was not a specific target. They were just going to shoot,” he said.

Sheriff McCain said that the thwarted school shooting was the third such incident in Grant Parish schools so far this year, according to KALB.

Deputies arrested a 16-year-old student at Georgetown High School in October after he threatened to harm a teacher and students at the high school.

Another Grant Junior High student was arrested in an incident earlier in the school year, but no details were available, KALB reported.

There is no school resource officer assigned to Grant Junior High, according to the sheriff.

A ballot measure that would have increased sales tax to fund a school resource officer in every Grant Parish school was defeated in the November election, KALB reported.