Boy, 13, accused of planning mass shooting at Ohio synagogue

A 13-year-old boy was accused of planning a mass shooting at an Ohio synagogue, according to court documents cited in local news reports.

The reports said the boy, who has not been publicly named because he’s a minor, now faces juvenile misdemeanor charges of inducing panic and of disorderly conduct. He is set to go to trial on Dec. 20 in Stark County Family Court.

In the court documents, law enforcement officials claimed the boy “did create a detailed plan to complete a mass shooting at the Temple Israel on the Discord platform,” which is an online platform for group chats.  

The court filing claimed that the plan, which was discovered around Sept. 1 in Plain Township, was subsequently reported to law enforcement. The Stark County Sheriff’s Office investigated the matter.

The discovery of the boy’s plan also required that law enforcement notify “public individuals and agencies, including the school system, which caused significant public alarm within those agencies,” the court filing said.

Antisemitism has been in the rise in recent years, a trend that was fueled by the Oct. 7 deadly attack that Hamas launched on Israel’s southern border and by Israel’s ongoing war that has killed thousands and destroyed swaths of the Gaza Strip.

According to new data from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a group aimed at combatting hate and antisemitism, incidents targeted against Jews jumped by 337 percent in the two months after the attack.

From Oct. 7 to Dec. 7, the nation saw 2,031 reported antisemitic incidents — the highest number since the ADL began tracking in 1979. The total incidents reported from that period more than quadrupled from the same period in 2022 — when there were 465 antisemitic incidents reported.

Jewish leaders were warning of rising antisemitism even before the Israel-Hamas war broke out.

The deadliest attack on Jews in United States history took the form of a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018. A gunman walked into a Sabbath morning prayer service and killed 11 people.