Teen suspect in plot to kill peers: I'm a loving person

The teen who has twice been accused of plotting to kill students at Connetquot High School said Wednesday that he's never wanted to hurt anyone.

"I'm a very loving person," Christopher Franko said during a jailhouse interview. "But nobody wants to view me as that. Everybody wants to view me as the mad bomber."

Franko's second arrest in about two years comes as he was finally getting the help he needed after years of physical and emotional bullying from classmates, he said. He had just earned his driver's license and had fallen in love.

"And look at me now," he said from a small visiting booth at Suffolk jail in Riverhead. Police say Franko, who was arrested last Thursday on a misdemeanor conspiracy charge, and girlfriend Dana Saltzman, 16, of Commack, planned to carry shotguns into the high school and open fire on students.

"May we kill as many as possible and teach these bastards a lesson," Franko wrote in a text message to Saltzman, police said.

Franko said Saltzman, his first love, is the reason he is in jail. He said he never wrote that text message and Saltzman made up the entire story.

"I'm innocent," said Franko, who turns 18 next month. "It's all Dana Saltzman."

Saltzman, who was released without bail after her arrest, told police she and Franko went to a Sports Authority in Commack to buy a shotgun, Suffolk police said. Franko said they were at the store, where they hung out often, but never asked about any guns.

Franko said Saltzman made up the plot because she was mad at him for his recent suicide attempt. Saltzman's attorney called Franko "delusional."

"After all the evidence is in, you will see that he was the party responsible for everything," said her attorney, Ceasar Galarza of Massapequa Park. "She's an impressionable 16- year-old. He has previous contact with the justice system."

In 2007, when Franko was 15, he got in trouble for writing in a notebook that he was planning a Columbine-style attack on his school. For that, he pleaded guilty in Family Court to second-degree conspiracy and was sentenced to a year at a juvenile treatment facility.

He insisted he never meant to harm anyone. "I wrote stuff down but it was just venting," he said Wednesday. "I'm sorry everybody takes this so seriously. But you have to realize when a kid is just venting."

He said classmates made fun of him for being short, overweight and for living in a Bohemia trailer park. Connetquot Superintendent Alan Groveman said school officials take bullying seriously.

The year at the treatment center "was one of the best experiences of my life," he said.

He's now much taller and says he is confident and no longer measures self-worth by his peers' opinions.

He's confident he'll find a way past his current legal problems.

"I know I'll walk away from this and I'll be a successful writer, and I'll have a lot of success in life," he said.

Franko said that he had recently taken the SATs and had planned to enroll at Suffolk County Community College, where he wants to major in English. But Franko still struggles with frustration over peers who taunted him. Last month, when two Connetquot students died in a car crash, Franko posted unkind comments on a Facebook memorial page about one of them.

He said he lashed out because the teen was one of his former bullies. The teen's mother has said the two students hardly knew each other.

"I'd like to send my deepest apologies to . . . [the teen's] family for putting them through that," Franko said. "And to his friends, I'd like to say I'm sorry."