Officials are touting a young Tennessee gamer as a hero after the boy thwarted a mass shooting allegedly being planned and discussed on a gamer chat site by two Tehama County teenagers.

The two boys, ages 14 and 15, had planned a shooting at Evergreen Institute of Excellence, in the Northern California town of Cottonwood, where they expected to kill up to 100 people, said Tehama County Sheriff Dave Kain during a news conference Tuesday. Before the deadly attack, the two close friends allegedly planned to kill one set of their parents.

“This was serious,” Kain said. “It would have changed our community as a whole.

The two friends allegedly wrote a manifesto for the deadly attack, took photos of themselves in the same clothes and posed as the teenage killers in the 1999 Columbine mass shooting, and spoke in an online game’s chat about the planned shooting.

It was in that game’s chat that a Tennessee boy became aware of the possible attack, and decided to call the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office on the evening of May 9 about the disturbing chat.

Kain said the gamer’s decision to call authorities about the possible attack could have saved lives.

“This young man had the courage and heroic instincts to call our agency and notify us in order to mitigate any possible threat to our citizens and, possibly, our young people,” Kain said.

The gamer provided investigators with the suspect’s gamer tag, contents of the chat, as well as a shared photo one of the suspects posted of them posing like the Columbine school shooters.

Kain said the shared image helped investigators contact school administrators, identify the two students, and take both of them into custody.

“Our investigators took that tip seriously since the beginning,” Kain said.

Investigators served search warrants at the homes of the two suspects, where they found improvised explosive devices they believe were made to use in the school attack. Firearms were also seized, Kain said.

The two friends had planned to go forward with the attack on May 9, but didn’t because one of them backed out, he said. It’s unclear what the motivation for the school shooting was, but Kain said one of the teen suspects talked about being bullied when interviewed by investigators.

The two suspects were booked on suspicion of making criminal threats, possession of a destructive device, manufacturing a destructive device, and conspiracy to commit a felony, Kain said. Investigators are also working with prosecutors and looking at the possibility of a charge of conspiracy to commit mass murder.

The two teens appeared in court Thursday, and were ordered to remain in custody, per a request from the Tehama County District Attorney’s Office, according to a statement from the office.

Kain said sheriff officials have spoken with school administrators to provide additional security at the school, but said the threat was isolated to the two suspects already in custody.

As a sign of confidence, the sheriff said his son returned to classes at the same middle school on Monday.

Kain declined to offer any details on the underage gamer who reported the threat, but said he and his parents were told they were invited to visit Tehama County to be recognized.

A former delivery driver has pleaded guilty to conspiring with several others to steal over $2.5 million from DoorDash, a San Francisco-based food delivery company, federal prosecutors said.

Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri, 30, of Newport Beach, California, pleaded guilty on May 13 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Prosecutors said Devagiri admitted to working with three others and a former employee of DoorDash in a fraud scheme that targeted the company between 2020 and 2021.

In the scheme, the group caused DoorDash to pay for deliveries that never occurred, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said the scheme resulted in more than $2.5 million in fraudulent payments.

Devagiri was arrested and indicted alongside Manaswi Mandadapu, 29; Matheus Duarte, 29; and Hari Vamsi Anne, 30, in October 2024, according to prosecutors. All four were charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Mandadapu pleaded guilty to the charge on May 6, prosecutors said. Duarte and Anne previously pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to appear in court on July 22, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The former DoorDash employee involved in the scheme, Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn, was charged in a separate indictment in September 2022 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in November 2023, according to prosecutors.

Devagiri is expected to appear in court for a status hearing on September 16, prosecutors said. He faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

‘Fundamentally unfair’: DoorDash to pay millions to dashers after company pocketed tips

Fraudulent accounts, manipulated DoorDash software

DoorDash provides food delivery services to customers who place orders on the platform. Drivers who work for the company fulfill those orders by picking up ordered items from restaurants and other merchants and delivering them to customers.

According to an indictment unsealed in October 2024, the group worked together between November 2020 to February 2021. During that period, Devagiri, along with Mandadapu, Duarte, and Anne, created multiple fraudulent customer and driver accounts with DoorDash, the indictment states.

The group used the fraudulent customer accounts to place “high value” orders from restaurants across Northern California, including Santa Clara County, according to the indictment. They then utilized an employee’s credentials to access DoorDash’s computer systems and software.

The indictment further alleged that the group used the computer systems to manually reassign DoorDash orders placed by their fraudulent customer accounts to their driver accounts. Prosecutors said Devagiri then would report the orders had been delivered on the driver accounts when they had not and manipulated the software to prompt DoorDash to pay the driver accounts for the deliveries that never occurred.

‘Senseless act of violence’: DoorDash driver shot after arriving at wrong house; NY highway official arrested

Devagiri also used the DoorDash software to change the orders from “complete” statuses to “in process” statuses and reassigned the orders to driver accounts that the group controlled, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said Devagiri repeated this process, which took less than five minutes, hundreds of times for many orders.

In total, the group stole over $2.5 million and received payments through bank accounts controlled by Devagiri Mandadapu, Duarte, and Anne, the indictment states.

According to the indictment, the group gained access to the software by using credentials that belonged to Bottenhorn, who was a resident of Solano County, California. He briefly worked for DoorDash in 2020. After pleading guilty in 2023, prosecutors said Bottenhorn admitted to being involved in the scheme to defraud the company.

Devagiri Mandadapu, Duarte, and Anne were all arrested on Oct. 4, 2024, prosecutors said. Devagiri and Mandadapu were taken into custody in Newport Beach and later released on bond. Duarte was arrested in Mountain House, California, and was also released on bond.

Anne was arrested in Cypress, Texas, and was detained in Houston pending further proceedings, according to prosecutors.

When my son was younger, there were times I wondered whether he’d ever stop talking about his interests. From detailed stories of his latest “Minecraft” session to chattering about his favorite Marvel superheroes, it seemed there weren’t enough hours in the day for him to tell me things. But whoever said “the days are long but the years are short” was right, and in a blink I found myself facing my son’s 17th birthday — his last before technically becoming an adult.

My son and I still talk quite a bit, whether discussing horror movies or analyzing his dating life, but between his first part-time job and getting his driver’s license, I see and hear from him less these days. For his birthday, I let him plan the itinerary for a trip to California — just him and me.

For nearly a week, we hit the Universal and Disneyland theme parks, saw movies in historic theaters, and ate lots of cheeseburgers. It was pretty incredible, both to spend dedicated time with him and to see him embrace the things that interest him most.

Embracing his interests over the years helped shape the trip

I’ve learned the best way to stay close to my kids is to embrace what interests them. My son is very interested in film, so when he told me he wanted to “go to the restaurant David Lynch always went to” while we were in Los Angeles, I turned to Google. “Do you mean the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank?” I asked.

Lynch, the director behind “Twin Peaks” who died earlier this year, was known to visit the iconic restaurant for a coffee and a chocolate milkshake most afternoons, so we did, too. It was a seemingly silly stop, but one that will be a core memory for both of us.

We’ve always enjoyed going to theme parks together

When my kids were younger, we visited Central Florida theme parks nearly every weekend. Now, they have their own lives and social schedules, so we go less frequently. Still, when we talked about a trip to California, my son said, “Can we go to Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood?”

It was a reminder that when you build memories with your kids when they’re small, those things stick. We had a great time on rides at Disneyland and doing a movie studio backlot tour at Universal, things we may not have added to our itinerary had we not gone when he was younger.

He’s developed his own interests, too

My son’s biggest request on our trip was to visit as many historic theaters in California as possible. While staying at Disneyland, we took a drive to Santa Ana to visit an arthouse movie theater he discovered while planning the trip. In Los Angeles, we saw “Sinners” at Universal CityWalk in 70 mm Imax, a filming style my film-enthusiast son said “was the way it was meant to be seen” and something definitely not offered in our small Florida town.

Film is my son’s passion, so I was content to tag along. Part of growing up is learning what makes you happiest, and seeing my kid delight in visiting historic theaters and seeing a movie every single day of our trip made me happy, even if my vacation preferences are more along the lines of lounging poolside and trying distinctive restaurants.

I’m proud I’ve raised such an interesting human being

Our trip wasn’t just movie theaters and theme parks. My son also requested we visit the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles and begged to visit stores that sold “physical media” (the film-nerd term for hard copies of movies) so he could add to his 4K Blu-ray collection. He ate 10 cheeseburgers over our weeklong trip, including two visits to In-N-Out Burger, a chain we love but do not have on the East Coast. Though I let him have the reins throughout the trip, I ended up having an amazing time, too.

Our routine has changed over the years, from storytime snuggles and Lego-building contests to college planning and navigating the teenage years. I’m so thankful I took the time to listen when he waxed poetic about video games and comic books for hours on end. Without those moments, he’d probably not include me in his interests today, and his interests are pretty cool, in my opinion.