Members of Congress, one participant says, have asked the NRA to "secretly provide them with talking points. Then, learn about Brenda Ann Spencer, who shot up a school because she didnt like Mondays. "Everything seemed to slow down," he recalled. At some point, Klebold committed to the NBK plan, although perhaps he only thought about it as an elaborately theatrical suicide. The majority of the fatalities during the Columbine High School massacre occurred in the library: 10 students would never make it out of the room that day. The official Jefferson County Sheriffs Office account of the events included this moving coda: While this report establishes a record of the events of April 20, it cannot answer the most fundamental questionWHY? Rumors swirled around Columbine High School that they were in serious trouble. Even stranger, Harris a straight-A student had missed their philosophy exam. After Halloween 1997, Harris and Klebold bragged about shooting trick-or-treaters with a BB gun. Bullying was fairly common at Columbine High School and teachers reportedly did little to stop it. I hope we kill 250 of you, Klebold said in a video. Eric Harris, born in Wichita, Kansas, was the son of an Air Force pilot and spent much of his childhood moving from place to place. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. The detective they spoke to noted pipe bombs had been found in the area and thought the threats were credible enough to file a formal report. "When you take those different pieces of the puzzle, put them together, I think we have a better chance of stopping these things. Police respond to a shooting that injured teacher Abigail Zwerner at Richneck Elementary in Newport News in January. Then, they left, allowing the majority to escape. No Easy Answers: The Full Story Of The Columbine High School Shooting. Perhaps thats because no one wanted to believe hope could be lost on two young men like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Jefferson County Sheriffs Department via Getty ImagesFrom left, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold examine a sawed-off shotgun at a makeshift firing range not long before the Columbine shooting. What's the industry going to do? Some schools teach students about the best hiding places in the classroom, how to barricade the door and how to throw objects at an intruder as a distraction, he said. The duffel bag Eric Harris was carrying when he talked to Brooks Brown contained one of several propane tank time bombs. Klebold, equally miserable, remained in the program until he aged out in sixth grade. On April 20, 1999, two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver. In total, he killed 32 victims and injured 23 others before turning the gun on himself. It was compulsive. Harris father Wayne managed to get both boys into a Juvenile Diversion program. They were laughing after they shot, said Aaron Cohn, a survivor. Brown had also noted his friends car was parked far from its usual place. Columbine High School reopened in the fall of 1999, but the massacre left a scar on the Littleton community. Colorado governor signs 4 gun control bills after massacre It was one of the deadliest school shooting incidents in American history. In addition to hating human beings, loving Nazis, and wanting to Kill Mankind, in an entry from November of 1998, he describes his fantasies, stating, I want to grab some weak little freshman and just tear them apart like a fucking wolf. A year later, Columbine's aftershocks are felt near Berlin Because their story needs a villain. A few days later, parked at a stop sign by Harris bus stop, Harris shattered Browns windshield with a block of ice. That was in February 1999. A pump-action shotgun and assault rifle used in the Columbine High School shooting. Columbine High School students and family members mourn during a memorial in Littletons Clement Park on the two-year anniversary of the Columbine shooting. The police were another problem. Billboards advertising a "World Class Guns & Gear Expo" already peppered the city. On the morning of Tuesday, April 20, 1999, Columbine High School senior Brooks Brown noted something strange. Uvalde: How lessons from Columbine went unheeded in Texas massacre - CNN In that moment, the anger already building inside Eric Harris found a target. ", Charlton Heston, then the NRA's president, delivered a defiant message at the organization's 1999 meeting: "Why us? In early 1998, Harris stopped posting online and began keeping a notebook he titled The Book of God, mostly dedicated to his homicidal fantasies and nihilistic philosophy. Klebold had actually been keeping his own diary, Existences: A Virtual Book, since the previous spring. HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. While theyd successfully managed to build them, the two then also decided to escalate things even further and consequently made two 20-pound propane bombs for the big event. On the way there, he encountered Harris wearing a trench coat and pulling a bulky duffel bag from his car, parked far from its designated spot. A final bomb was placed in a park three miles from school, set to go off before the others. The deadliest school shooting in U.S. history took place on April 16, 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia. Columbine High School shootings, massacre that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, leaving 15 dead, including the two students responsible for the attack. The truth was more complicated, and thus, harder to digest. After letting them inside, the pair explained they were running missions toilet papering houses, spray painting graffiti, and setting fire to potted plants. Instead of sending it SWAT teams, police held their perimeter until after Harris and Klebold had killed themselves. The problem was that his father picked up the phone, and Harris had to claim it was a wrong number. Despite the overwhelming trauma, DeAngelis noticed an immense stigma surrounding mental health treatment, and he said he was discouraged from disclosing he was seeing a therapist in case he'd be "deemed unfit for duty. Columbine High SchoolEric Harris, as photographed for the Columbine High School yearbook. April 20, 1999. One of the biggest myths spread about the massacre was that it came out of nowhere and that Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were two regular kids who never displayed any outward signs that they may have been alarmingly troubled. DeAngelis, who spent 18 years as principal, retired in 2014 -- after he felt he had done his duty to heal the community. They regularly attended football games, cheering on Harris older brother, the starting kicker of the Columbine High School football team, the Rebels. By then, the popular beliefs about what had happened on April 20, 1999 were seared into the collective consciousness. Finally, after one argument that winter, Brown told Harris he would never give him a ride again. They want us to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief, to provide riveting programming to run between commercials for cars and cat food," Heston said at the time to applause. Gone were the carefree days of the Clinton era here was the dawn of active shooter drills and daily fears for our childrens safety. Over 90% of schools now have a written crisis plan, Garrett said, while over 75% of schools -- as young as elementary -- hold active shooter drills. He was attacking what school represented to him: the point of indoctrination into the society he despised, suppressing individuality and human nature., [School is] societies way of turning all the young people into good little robots and factory workers, he wrote on April 21, 1998, continuing, I will sooner die than betray my own thoughts. Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA, is seen here in a photo taken just weeks after the 1999 Columbine shooting. He also expressed sincere sadness that he wasnt dating anyone and that anger was potentially boiling beneath the surface at all times, according to CNN. On the contrary, Klebolds parents even combined their efforts by forming their own real estate company substantially increasing the familys income and providing a comfortable home environment for Klebold. ", Asked for comment, a current NRA spokesperson said, "It is disappointing that anyone would promote an editorial agenda against the NRA by using shadowy sources and 'mystery tapes' in order to conjure up the tragic events of over 20 years ago.". Ten years ago, two teenagers walked into a Colorado school and massacred 13 people. It was only once Eric Harris And Dylan Klebold joined forces that their shared dissatisfaction began to morph into something more tangible. BAKER: I talked to Delfay this morning, and he said they stand ready to help us orchestrate whatever we want to do. The Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.The shooting has had an effect on school safety, policing tactics, prevention methods (including gun control and metal detectors), and inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many killers taking their inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold by describing the two perpetrators as being martyrs or heroes. especially life. In the days immediately following the shootings, it was speculated that Harris and Klebold purposely chose athletes, minorities and Christians as their victims. One victim, Dave Sanders, was allowed to bleed out due to the slow police response, and multiple bodies were left where they were two outside and uncovered overnight for fear of booby traps. Some parents were not even told their children were killed. Because these bombs were so much bigger than the others, Harris and Klebold could not hide them at home. Columbine junior Chris Reilly said the two future Columbine shooters were a little upset they couldnt show their video to the whole school. Some students who were at the school during the April 20 attack have identified a potential third suspect, Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone was quoted as saying in Wednesday's Denver Post. But if the officer had followed them inside, "there's a good chance" the gunmen wouldn't have reached the library, where so many classmates were targeted, DeAngelis said. While the school shooting is largely remembered by most to have gone as the pair planned, this couldnt be further from the truth. A third measure . Meanwhile, just as a new school shooting reignites the gun control debate, it also introduces a new, shocked community to Columbine's unfortunate club, and as the leaders of the pack, Columbine survivors feel a duty to pay it forward. "I remember distinctly shots being fired, glass breaking behind me. March 6, 1999. May 1999. I had a difficult time looking at people in the eyes because of the guilt I felt. A man with a hatchet burst into a day care center in Brazil, killing four children and wounding at least four others. Department spokesman Steve Davis told CNN the possibility of a third suspect surfaced early in the investigation and still "hasn't been ruled out by any means. A pretty standard childhood of baseball, video games, and studious learning comprised Klebolds early years. On the website, Harris AOL profile where he wrote under the name Reb for Rebel, sometimes RebDoomer, he detailed his nocturnal exploits with VoDka (Klebolds screen name), describing various acts of vandalism including building pipe bombs and his desire to kill people namely, Brooks Brown. 11; Overwhelmingly, the offender is a single shooter (98 percent), primarily male . Victims of the Columbine shooting include Cassie Bernall, 17; Steven Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matthew Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; William "Dave" Sanders, 47; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; Lauren Townsend, 18, and Kyle Velasquez, 16. "One of the big issues in Columbine was law enforcement wasn't trained to go after the shooter," said Garrett, the former FBI agent. ", Over the next two decades, this unapologetic message would come to define the NRA's tone in the wake of mass shootings at American schools. He was more than angry, it seemed from his own words, but genuinely of the belief that he was bigger and more powerful than the rest of the world which he desperately wanted to quash. Klebold and Harris were no longer mere fans of violent video games like Doom but had obtained three weapons that would later be used in the shooting from a female friend who was old enough to purchase guns in the state of Colorado. Public DomainA page from Eric Harris journal showing drawings and notes related to guns and Doom. "Zero Hour" Massacre at Columbine High (TV Episode 2004) - IMDb The man unloaded one of the pistols across the fronts of four innocents. maybe going NBK (gawd) w. eric is the way to break free. On April 20, 1999, two students, cloaked in black trench coats and armed with guns and pipe bombs, opened fire at Columbine High School, killing 15 people . Harris journal is more single-minded. Until January of 1998, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold lived fairly normal lives. In the ensuing firestorm, former Republican President George H.W. To him, people were robots conned into following a false social order the same one that dared to judge him. The initial shock of the massacre quickly turned to total confusion: Parents, teachers, police officers, and journalists were all mystified as to how two teenagers could so easily and seemingly joyfully murder a dozen classmates and a teacher. Another question of protocol concerned the school resource officer, with whom the gunmen exchanged gunfire outside before storming the school, DeAngelis said. When Bernall allegedly said, Yes, she was shot to death. In the aftermath of the shootings, many schools across America enacted zero-tolerance rules regarding disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students. At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in trench coats, began shooting fellow students outside Columbine High School, located in a suburb south of Denver. "Even on the first day, a lot of students said that. The truth is, there was a massive amount of psychological turmoil and potential chemical imbalances that when combined with social stagnancy caused them to lash out in ways that no one wanted to imagine. There was strong criticism of the slow police response. Stone told the newspaper that the issue of a possible third gunman arose from statements by "students who were witnesses at the scene when this was going down" and who agreed on the third person's identity. America endured school shootings before Columbine, but never "one quite like that one," said ABC News contributor and former FBI agent Brad Garrett. Stone's remarks about a possible third attacker marked the latest turn in a case that has seen authorities appear at odds with each other over developments in the investigation. How Columbine became a blueprint for school shooters - The Conversation "I got to tell you, we got to think this thing through, because if we tuck tail and run, we're going to be accepting responsibility for what happened out there," says NRA official Jim Land. Meanwhile, Harris started pushing people away. The journal contains two notes to a girl he was fixated on, neither of which were ever delivered, and many, many drawings of hearts. Subsequent investigations determined Harris and Klebold chose their victims randomly, and the two teens originally had intended to bomb their school, potentially killing hundreds of people. Circa 1998. Some students wouldn't participate in fire drills. The Columbine Massacre took 15 lives (including the two shooters) and wounded 24. What changed between August 10, 1998 his last suicide threat and the attack on April 20, 1999, is unknown. LITTLETON, Colorado (CNN) -- Investigators are looking into witness reports of a third gunman involved in the shootings at Columbine High School and also expect to make "one or more" arrests of people involved in planning the attack, according to reports published Wednesday. An affidavit for a search warrant had been written. Drills weren't typical before Columbine, and now, active shooter scenarios are a common conversation for kids to have in school, whether they live in a rural setting or urban setting, Garrett said. ", "I got the help I needed," he stressed. Colorado governor signs 4 gun control bills months after Colorado "I think the evidence will show there were more than two people involved in this," the sheriff said. Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post via Getty ImagesColumbine High School students and family members mourn during a memorial in Littletons Clement Park on the two-year anniversary of the Columbine shooting. By spring 1998, they were already planning Judgement Day or NBK, shorthand for the film Natural Born Killers. Thirteen people lay dead at a high school in Colorado. I want to tear a throat out with my own teeth like a pop can, he once wrote in his journal. Just before lunch period, Brown walked outside toward the designated smoking area near the school parking lot. Investigators say he sold the gunmen a semiautomatic. Indeed, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fostered an unhealthy interest in Hitler, Nazi iconography, and the violence of the Third Reich. Does that look bad, or does it look uh MAKRIS: Well, I mean, that can be twisted too. Littleton residents gather at the Clemment Park memorial on Apr. Eric Harris (left) and Dylan Klebold in the school cafeteria during the Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999. ", But when it comes to preventing these future tragedies, DeAngelis hopes people know "there are kids that need help in schools. He can be heard on the recordings obtained by NPR calling some NRA supporters "nuts." Born on September 11, 1981 in Lakewood, Colorado, Dylan Klebold was considered gifted as early as grammar school. The shooting took place almost exactly eight years after the Columbine shooting, when a 23-year-old student opened fire at two locations on campus - first in a dorm room and then in an academic building across campus. Eric Harris was born on April 9, 1981, in Wichita, Kansas, which is where he spent his early childhood. How Columbine changed the way police respond to mass shooting - CNN Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris Victims of the Columbine Shooting The Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred when two teens went on a. By the start of his sophomore year at Columbine High School, Harris had created 11 different custom levels for Doom and its sequel Doom 2. YouTubeEric Harris in a scene from the Columbine shooters Hitmen For Hire project. Kevin Moloney/Getty Images Echoes of Columbine FBI On the morning of Tuesday, April 20, 1999, Columbine High School senior Brooks Brown noted something strange. The cafeteria videotape shows nothing," Davis said. This required more than mere firepower and so Harris and Klebold built pipe bombs over the course of several months before the attack. And inside, then-NRA President Charlton Heston delivered the defiant message that its leaders had planned out in their private calls a message very similar to the group's position on mass shootings today: The national media is not to be trusted, and any conversation about guns and the NRA after mass shootings is an untoward politicization of the issue. I have something only me and V [Klebold] have, SELF AWARENESS, he wrote a year before the attack. The teens then went back outside to their cars to wait for the bombs to go off. The full facts of what happened and what caused the Columbine High School massacre were not released until 2006, long after the public had moved on. Brown was never sure why hed done that, but Columbine author Dave Cullen suspects it was one of several attempts to draw attention to Harris behavior. The same year, Klebold was suspended for carving homophobic insults into a freshman boys locker. The report summarizing Harris mental state and development during the temporary probationary period a year prior even ended on a positive note. When I first saw the Web pages, I was utterly blown away, said Brown. but before I leave this worthless place, I will kill who ever I deam [sic] unfit for anything at all. The school couldn't show war movies, he said, and the administration banned camouflage clothing because first responders wore it that day. Omissions? Brooks, I like you now. "The most difficult thing was just providing support and help to everyone.". They learned about it in the newspaper. . The day after the massacre, Columbine High School students gather outside their school to pray and place flowers on the ground. Demonstrators attend the March for Our Lives rally, March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Two Connecticut State Police officers escort a class of students and two adults out of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Dec. 14, 2012, after a shooter entered the building and killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. Through Klebolds personal writings discovered after the shooting, it became clear that he had been suicidal for a while. Did you know? Just after the deadly shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, gun control advocates rallied at the Colorado State Capitol to protest the NRA's annual meeting that year in Denver. Investigators say he sold the gunmen a semiautomatic TEC DC-9 handgun that was used in the attack. hide caption, Charlton Heston, then the NRA's president, delivered a defiant message at the organization's 1999 meeting: "Why us? America endured school shootings before Columbine, but never "one quite like that one," said ABC News contributor and former FBI agent Brad Garrett. Lysol Was Once Used As Birth Control And Poisoned A Lot Of Women, The Death Of Grigori Rasputin, History's Most Unkillable Man, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. Within the last year, Harris had done things like repeatedly vandalize the Browns house, post death threats against him online, and brag about his experiments building pipe bombs. Far more often than violence, he talks about love, both abstractly and personally. Although Harris claimed after their first gun purchase that they had crossed the point of no return, he had not counted on a few complications. "As we got back into the groove of school, I repeatedly emphasized the need to be open to getting help," DeAngelis wrote in his book. [b] The perpetrators, 12th grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. "The fruitcakes are going to show up. Updates? For his book on the shooting, "Columbine," Dave Cullen analyzed media coverage and found that in the immediate aftermath of the Littleton attack, network news shows broadcast more than 40 . ", The sheer shock of 13 people losing their lives, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. On April 20th 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 13 people and then turned the guns on themselves. Initially, the idea was to set off bombs in the school cafeteria. But he was also harboring a deep hatred for the world. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. "We do have witness statements.". Klebold, a Colorado native, was noted for his shyness and intellect.