School shootings are horrific events. As a parent of two school-aged kids, I’m thankful for the security measures at their schools. I’m also thankful for the school resource officers who, I hope, will work to stop any attack that might materialize.

I also recognize how rare school shootings are, despite anti-gun rhetoric to the contrary.

However, an arrest in New Mexico has authorities alleging that the suspect was trying to train school shooters.

The father of a missing Georgia boy was training children at a New Mexico compound to commit school shootings, prosecutors said in court documents obtained Wednesday, as authorities waited to learn if human remains found at the site were those of the boy.

The documents say Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was conducting weapons training with assault rifles at the compound near the Colorado border where authorities say they found 11 hungry children living in filthy conditions in a raid Friday.

Prosecutor Timothy Hasson filed the court documents while asking that Wahhaj be held without bail after he was arrested last week with four other adults facing child abuse charges.

“He poses a great danger to the children found on the property as well as a threat to the community as a whole due to the presence of firearms and his intent to use these firearms in a violent and illegal manner,” Hasson wrote.

Prosecutors did not bring up the school shooting accusation in court on Wednesday during an initial appearance by the abuse suspects. A judge ordered Wahhaj held without bond pending further proceedings.

In the court documents, authorities said a foster parent of one of the 11 children removed from the compound had told authorities that the child had been trained to use an assault rifle in preparation for a school shooting.

This is sick. Absolutely sick.

There’s no mention of his potential motive, but we can certainly speculate. The idea of training kids to carry out a school shooting sounds an awful lot like he was going to use them as terrorist child soldiers.

To be clear, that’s mere speculation and based on limited facts. It’s also entirely possible that Ibn Wahhaj is just nuts and thinks…oh, who the hell knows what a crazy person is thinking. Apparently, the FBI thinks it’s the former, not the latter.

Either way, I’m thankful that he didn’t get to carry out his plan. I think that’s something on which everyone can agree.

At this point, the real shame is the conditions the kids were found in–which were third-world–and that the authorities didn’t know enough to intervene before the young boy whose body was found on the property died.