By Patrick Walters
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 12 -- The 18-year-old who killed eight people and himself in a high school shooting in Finland had communicated online about the Columbine massacre with a younger boy who has admitted plotting a school attack near Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania boy's attorney said Monday.

But Dillon Cossey, 14, was "horrified" when he found out about the Finnish attack and said he never would have suspected him of following through with a violent act, the lawyer said.

Finnish police said material seized from the computer of Pekka-Eric Auvinen suggests that Auvinen had communicated online with Cossey, who was arrested in October on suspicion of preparing an attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in suburban Philadelphia. The attack never took place.

Cossey's attorney, J. David Farrell, said that he showed Auvinen's online screen name to his client Monday and that the Pennsylvania boy remembered communicating with the Finnish teen in August or September about video games and the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado and exchanging videos they found on the Internet.

"They had discussed certain video games and shared videos with each other," Farrell said. "Obviously, Columbine was a shared topic of interest."

The two met through the YouTube video-sharing site, Farrell said. They also exchanged posts on a Web site dedicated to the Columbine killers, traded e-mail and probably chatted on certain Web sites, he said.

Auvinen killed six students, a nurse and the principal Wednesday in Tuusula, about 30 miles north of the Finnish capital, Helsinki. He then shot himself in the head and died hours later at a hospital.

Police in Finland said they had not yet been in contact with their U.S. colleagues about a possible link between the two teens.

Tipped off by a boy Cossey tried to recruit, Pennsylvania authorities searched his home last month. They found a rifle, about 30 air-powered guns modeled to look like higher-powered weapons, swords, knives, a bombmaking book, videos of the 1999 Columbine attack and violence-filled notebooks.

Montgomery County prosecutor Bruce Castor said he plans to announce Tuesday what investigators have culled from Cossey's computer.

Police have described Auvinen as a bullied teenage outcast consumed with anger against society.

Cossey told a friend he wanted to pull off an attack similar to the one at Columbine. Prosecutors and Farrell have said he felt bullied.