SUSPECTS ARRESTED FOR MAKING THREATS.

Byline: Bhavna Mistry Daily News Staff Writer

Cracking down in hopes of avoiding a tragedy like Tuesday's bloody rampage in Colorado, sheriff's deputies arrested two Highland High School students Thursday after a teacher and a student reported the boys had made threatening remarks in separate incidents.

The 17-year-old boys, whose names were not released because of their age, were taken into custody at noon Thursday on suspicion of making terrorist threats the previous day: one to a girl on a bus and the other during a classroom discussion of the Colorado shootings.

``It's being looked at seriously in light of what's been happening,'' said Deputy Chris Keeling. ``It's obviously better to be proactive than to assume that they are just joking.''

Both youths are being held at Challenger Memorial Youth Center without bail. Officials don't know if they know each other.

The arrests came two days after 12 students and a teacher at a Littleton, Colo., high school were shot to death by two teen-age gunmen who then killed themselves.

The morning after the shootings, deputies said a Highland High junior made a threatening comment to a girl as they rode to school on an Antelope Valley Transit Authority bus.

The girl said the boy told her that if he got as crazy as the Colorado killers, he would kill her first, Keeling said. The girl told a friend, who told a school official.

The same day during a classroom discussion of the Colorado killings, a sophomore told other students that he knows how to make bombs and acid-tipped bullets.

``He said he has blown up a refrigerator and a washing machine, and to blow up a classroom would not be a problem,'' Keeling said.