A 17-year-old north Snohomish County boy was ordered jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail today after he allegedly rushed into a Lakewood High School classroom Monday and held students and a teacher hostage at knifepoint.
David Thomas Lengenfelder is facing potential charges of felony assault and kidnapping, said Jim Townsend, the county’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor. He’s being treated as an adult because of the seriousness of the charge.
The teen is in the county jail, and he participated briefly in an Everett District Court hearing Tuesday. The judge did not require him to appear on a video link to the courtroom.
Through his attorney, Lengenfelder stipulated that prosecutors have cause to potentially charge him with crimes.
Prosecutors had earlier presented the defense with a document alleging that Lengenfelder had admitted to detectives that he’d been planning the attack for two weeks.
The teen earlier was expelled from school and pleaded guilty to a juvenile felony harassment charge for writing sexually explicit and threatening letters to a 15-year-old Lakewood girl.
Lengenfelder allegedly told detectives he wanted to take the girl hostage for at least an hour “to try to convince her that the threats he made to her previously were not serious,” according to documents The Herald obtained under state public records laws.
Prosecuting Attorney Jim Krider said he expects charges to be filed soon.
The teen could face 10 or more years in prison if convicted of all the charges now under consideration, Townsend said.
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