Three first-grade girls at an Anchorage, Alaska, elementary school allegedly planned to kill a fellow classmate using silica gel -- the "do not eat" pouches packaged with vitamins and electronics, according to the Alaska Dispatch News.
All three students were caught and suspended from Winterberry Charter School. They still face "significant consequences," Principal Shanna Mall explained in an email to parents of the 32 first graders in the class.
The girls had reportedly planned to take silica gel packets, which are labeled "Do Not Consume," from their lunchtime seaweed and place them in a classmate's lunch on March 22. They didn't realize that silica gel -- a drying agent used to keep packaged goods fresh -- is actually not poisonous.
Their plan was foiled when two students alerted an adult about the plot.
No criminal charges have been filed against the students. The school district continues investigating and the offending children could be expelled, a district spokeswoman said.
"The age is one of the things that is most surprising to people who were hearing about this," the spokeswoman, Heidi Embley, told the Alaska Dispatch, adding that school psychologists are helping with the investigation.
Anchorage police spokeswoman Jennifer Castro said that the silver lining in the story is that fellow students told an adult about the plan.
"The important lesson here is to really teach your kids if they hear something like this, something where someone intends to do harm to someone else, they should tell someone that they trust right away," Castro told local news station KTUU.
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