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Early Thursday 19-year-old John Hagins in Daytona Beach, Florida. Two students at Embry-Riddle University are credited with preventing a mass shooting in their school. 

Hagins is being charged with written threats to injure or kill, attempted first-degree homicide, and terrorism. And Friday, a Volusia County judge ruled Hagins will be held without bond.

The threatening messages appeared in a Snapchat group. Hagin was threatening a Columbine-type shooting. And two very concerned students reported the threats to campus security. The police were contacted at around 4:10 a.m. 

Police immediately went to Hagins’ residence. They were able to quickly apprehend him outside his apartment. The accused man was carrying a backpack that contained a collapsible rifle, a magazine, and boxes of ammunition. He had posted photos of the gun earlier with the note "This looks special."

Embry-Riddle University was targeted

Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young announced the arrest at a press conference. He says that Hagins is a student at the private Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. And his alleged “plot to shoot up” the campus is being taken very seriously.

This arrest comes just days after the Oxford High School mass shooting in Michigan which left four students dead.

Young said Hagins was heading to a shooting range to practice with his newly purchased firearm. He sold his car to make the purchase.

Detectives discovered that Hagins was "in danger of failing classes" at the college. He is also accused of sexual assault of a female student at the school. And he had received an on-campus traffic ticket Wednesday before selling his car.

It is alleged that after practicing on the range the suspect was heading to the campus to make his social media threats a reality. 

Young reports Hagins confesses to making the Snapchat posts, adding: “He may want to claim that it was all a joke and he wasn’t serious about it. But we don’t find anything funny about discussing a mass shooting on campus. If he was looking for attention, he's got it."

The police chief asked others to alert authorities in a similar situation. And to follow the two students' examples who “stepped up came forward and brought this to our attention."

"Most of these gunmen that carry out acts like this tell somebody for some reason. They want to brag. They want somebody to know."

“If you see something, you say something. This is the way we combat what’s going on in this country right now,” he added. 

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is the world's largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace.