Klebold allegedly shouted Were going to kill every one of you, and the Columbine shooters began shooting at people indiscriminately and tossing pipe bombs around without any notion of who exactly would be killed. There was a girl crouched beneath a desk in the library, and the guy came over and said, Peek a boo, and shot her in the neck, said Kirkland, recalling Klebolds vicious killing of Cassie Bernall. On April 20, 1999, two students opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, gunning down 12 of their fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves. YouTubeEric Harris in a scene from the Columbine shooters Hitmen For Hire project. Since the 1999 tragedy at Columbine High School, we identified six mass shootings and 40 active shooter incidents at elementary, middle or high schools in the United States. Some captured the nation's attention: the horror of the mass murder of 20 young children and six educators in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 were gunned down, allegedly by a former classmate, sparking a student-led revolt for gun reform across the country. Worse still was the dirty secret that Brooks Brown and his family shared almost immediately: The police had been warned about Eric Harris. When Bernall allegedly said, Yes, she was shot to death. Circa 1998-1999. "What we're trying to avoid here, I think, is what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing," says PR adviser McQueen. The key, he said, is those pieces working together as one: Prior to Columbine, he said, law enforcement, mental health professionals and school administrators worked separately. Jefferson County Sheriffs Department via Getty ImagesFrom left, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold examine a sawed-off shotgun at a makeshift shooting range. HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. The NRA ultimately decided to hold its convention in Denver after the shootings, albeit vastly scaled down in size. On April 20, 1999, two students opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, gunning down 12 of their fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves. hide caption. 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. 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. Of course, the day of the shooting proved they hadnt learned quite as much as theyd thought. Robert Delfay was the head of an industry trade group. Each student dealt with the tragedy in a different way, he said. Colorado's governor has signed four gun control bills five months after a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub. On April 20th 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 13 people and then turned the guns on themselves. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not in the Trench Coat Mafia, most of whom had graduated by 1999, but their friend Chris Morris was. For Halloween 1996, one routinely bullied junior named Eric Dutro had his parents buy him a black duster jacket for a Dracula costume. That is, why would two young men, in the spring of their lives, choose to murder faculty members and classmates? They acquired a fourth weapon, a bomb, from a coworker at the pizza place. Parkland students visited Colorado last year to meet Columbine survivors, DeAngelis said, and the elders gave the teenagers guidance on how to maneuver their years ahead. I hope we kill 250 of you, Klebold said in a video. She tells LaPierre that even if they don't lose money, they would lose face if they canceled. 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. More than 20 were injured. A school bus in 1999 passes a billboard advertising the NRA's annual meeting in Denver, previously scheduled to take place just 10 days after the shooting at Columbine High School. April 20, 1999. Though new measures are in place in schools, mass shootings overall aren't on the decline, Garrett said. hide caption, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA, is seen here in a photo taken just weeks after the 1999 Columbine shooting. "It really felt like we were going to go to school the next day," and she figured she needed to do her homework, Farber recalled. Dylan Klebold (left) and Brooks Brown in elementary school. Get out of here. 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. "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. One girl was shot in the chest nine times. Still, imposing liability on business owners for the criminal acts of third-party shooters remains a challenging legal case for victims to make. ", "Investigators are still trying to "prove it or disprove it," Davis said. I had a difficult time looking at people in the eyes because of the guilt I felt. In the aftermath of the shootings, many schools across America enacted zero-tolerance rules regarding disruptive behavior and threats of violence from students. The governor was flanked by activists wearing red shirts reading, "Moms Demand Action," students from a Denver high school recently affected by a shooting, and parents of a woman killed in the . It was in 1998, the year before the shooting, that the two boys were first arrested. With the bombs failing to go off, Harris and Klebold changed their plans and entered the school at about 11 a.m., after theyd killed three students outside the school and wounding several others. Prior to Columbine, nobody understood what the term 'active shooter' meant Nowadays, we go to the sound of . Finally, Klebold and Harris returned to the library to watch their car bombs fizzle, before picking a spot with a view of the Rocky Mountains and shooting themselves in the head. Narrator: Often, school shooters are . So if you restrict the way they buy weapons, they can just wait or go to another state to buy an assault weapon.". "I think the evidence will show there were more than two
people involved in this," the sheriff said. Investigators later learned Harris and Klebold had arrived in separate cars at Columbine around 11:10 on the morning of the massacre. By the time law enforcement decided to storm the building, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebolds rampage was long over. When did the Columbine High School shootings take place? Because these bombs were so much bigger than the others, Harris and Klebold could not hide them at home. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Baker can also be heard telling others not to worry about the stance of the firearms industry. Brown then shook his head and walked away from campus, weighing whether to skip next period. One of his last entries reads: Im stuck in humanity. "One of the big issues in Columbine was law enforcement wasn't trained to go after the shooter," said Garrett, the former FBI agent. 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. It was one of the deadliest school shooting incidents in American history. Though April 20 was Adolf Hitlers birthday, it was actually only a coincidence that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried out their attack on that particular date. A page from Eric Harris journal showing drawings and notes related to guns and, Jefferson County Sheriffs Department via Getty Images. "Don't anybody kid yourself about this great macho thing of going down there and showing our chest and showing how damn tough we are. 10; The average active-shooter incident lasts 12 minutes. Updated: May 25, 2022 | Original: November 9, 2009. "You know, the other problem is holding a member meeting without an exhibit hall. All of this mightve occurred if the bombs actually worked which they didnt. A total of 15 people died during the Columbine High School shootings: 12 students, one teacher, and the two students responsible for the attack. hide caption. 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. Stone did say he expects that fingerprint analyses of
bullets and bomb materials will show that Harris and
Klebold had help in planning the shootings. In total, he killed 32 victims and injured 23 others before turning the gun on himself. May 1999. Here is all evidence released - including the witness statements known as the 11k. Indeed, even two decades later, people are still attempting to reconcile how two children couldve engaged in such immense violence and become the Columbine shooters. From this, it can be inferred that Harris had to convince Klebold to go through with the attack at the last minute. NPR reached out to the NRA and provided it with transcripts of the audio we used in this story. 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. Shortly after 12 p.m., the two teens turned their guns on themselves. One day after the shootings, the NRA's top executives, officials, lobbyists and public relations strategists all scrambled on to a conference call to deal with the crisis. "There was quite possibly one other person shooting," Stone
said. "There's that instant credibility, which I think really helps," DeAngelis said. No Compromise: Inside an extreme corner of the gun debate, Gun rights are back at the Supreme Court for the first time in more than a decade, The NRA is being sued for allegedly breaking campaign finance law to back Republicans. The truth was more complicated, and thus, harder to digest. That was in February 1999. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events. However, it later was determined the question was not posed to Bernall but to another student who already had been wounded by a gunshot. The baffling question never really went away. LaPierre claims that Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., had secretly asked him for talking points to use after the shooting. Meanwhile, he researched the Brady Bill and various loopholes in gun laws, before finally, on November 22, 1998, joining Klebold in convincing an 18-year-old mutual friend (and later Klebolds prom date) to buy two shotguns and a high carbine rifle for them at a gun show. Public DomainDrawings from the journal of Eric Harris. I want to grab some weak little freshman and just tear them apart like a fucking wolf. The strategists ultimately decided that canceling their convention would deny them a platform to respond to criticism and also that a cancellation would be an opportunity for attacks by the national media. hide caption. Security cameras show they then went to the cafeteria, trying and failing to set off the propane tanks with pipe bombs and shotgun blasts. The two then walked into the school cafeteria, where they placed two duffel bags each containing a 20-pound propane bomb set to explode at 11:17 a.m. The journal contains two notes to a girl he was fixated on, neither of which were ever delivered, and many, many drawings of hearts. In the window of one classroom, a student put up a piece of paper that read, Help me, Im bleeding. Others tried to get out through heating vents or used anything at their disposal desks and chairs to barricade themselves. 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. Circa 1998. Stone said investigators have
questioned the person. They were hooting and hollering and getting a big joy out of this.. It was also when their behavior changed, with Harris becoming bolder and stranger while the impressionable Klebold followed suit. Ten years ago, two teenagers walked into a Colorado school and massacred 13 people. The April 20, 1999, Columbine shooting, which killed 13, shocked the nation. But the local drug dealer who was supposed to provide Harris and Klebold with their ammunition was late. Van Dreal: Revenge is a driving force in school violence because it's borne from humiliation and loss of control. Writing since 2004, his articles on Spiritualism, grave robbery, document relics, and other topics have appeared in Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, Fine Books, and Collections Magazine. Officials later found two propane tank bombs in the cafeteria; had they detonated, the death toll would have been much higher. It was met by thousands of protesters. When that victim replied, Yes, the shooter walked away. After Halloween 1997, Harris and Klebold bragged about shooting trick-or-treaters with a BB gun. The truth about Columbine. A . "The hair on the back of my neck stood up" when this thought occurred to her, Hammer says. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), https://www.history.com/topics/1990s/columbine-high-school-shootings. Jefferson County Sheriffs Office/Getty Images. They were supposed to stand many yards from each other for an optimal firing range, but when the shooting started, the two were standing together at Klebolds assigned position. Since Columbine, there have been 11 school shootings that were considered mass shootings -- where four or more victims were killed. Today, most people still think Columbine could have been stopped if only someone had been a little nicer to Eric Harris a humanizing story that covers over a truth too terrible to think about. ABC News' Meghan Keneally contributed to this report. Because of her "troubling" comments and actions -- including buying three one . In the wake of the 2002 Columbine school massacre, for example, victims sued video-game makers and movie producers and distributors, . As time went on, Brown noticed the missions growing crueler. Parties and banquets were planned even an appearance by a comedian. The evidence provides no definitive explanation, and the question continues to haunt us all. Once Farber was safely inside a home, she heard shots across the parking lot. DeAngelis soon realized Columbine could no longer serve Chinese food because that was served the day of the shooting. Eric is a very bright young man who is likely to succeed in life, it read. Harris journal is more single-minded. 24, 1999 to pays respects to 12 students and one teacher who died at Columbine High School following a shooting by two students. Because their story needs a villain. Sketches and notes taken from Eric Harris journal. For slightly under an hour, the pair killed a dozen of their peers, one teacher, and wounded 20 more people. Two were placed in the cafeteria to bring down the ceiling and allow Harris and Klebold to shoot students as they fled. Because their story needs a villain. Instead, they were hastily constructed on the morning of the attack. They struggled with whether to cancel the convention entirely, proceed with a pared-down event or just go ahead as planned. He can be heard on the recordings obtained by NPR calling some NRA supporters "nuts." Perhaps thats because no one wanted to believe hope could be lost on two young men like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The duos waning interest in academics was soon reflected in Klebolds grades. Does that look crass or NRA LOBBYIST JIM BAKER: You mean the legislative? Heirloom Fine PortraitsDylan Klebold. He is intelligent enough to achieve lofty goals as long as he stays on task and remains motivated.. Another man, Philip Duran, who introduced Harris and Klebold to Manes, also was sentenced to prison time. "We have meeting insurance," LaPierre replies. Thirteen people lay dead at a high school in Colorado. The massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007 is the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. (Garrett considers one of the most significant federal changes in recent decades to be the assault weapons ban signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, which expired in 2004 and was not renewed by Congress. It can be twisted, but we feel sympathetic and NRA SPOKESPERSON BILL POWERS: Respectful. While some suggest the two boys were targets of bullying, many more accounts show them as fairly popular, maintaining a sizeable group of friends. The pair worked their final shift at Blackjack Pizza on Friday, April 16. 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. The turning point seems to be when, after killing one student in the library, Harris shotgun recoiled into his face, breaking his nose. By all accounts, Harris was a model program participant. Eric Harris (left) and Dylan Klebold in the school cafeteria during the Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999. ", Charlton Heston, then the NRA's president, delivered a defiant message at the organization's 1999 meeting: "Why us? Is there anybody we ought to be talking to? Suicide by cop was Harris and Klebolds intended finale. Columbine shooter Eric Harris practices shooting a weapon at a makeshift shooting range. 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. In some ways, the killers writings help decrypt the Columbine shooting not because of what they reveal about their emotions, but the details of what they had really wanted to do. That's how the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School - where two young men killed 13 people - shaped the way law . Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Brown started running, knocking on doors until he found a telephone. Originally planned for April 19 the anniversary of the Waco Siege and the Oklahoma City Bombing the attack, Harris hoped, would beat Timothys McVeighs body count in Oklahoma. Within an hour, 18-year-old Harris and his 17-year-old partner Dylan Klebold a fellow Columbine High School student and Browns friend since first grade were dead. The dilemma they face is apparent in their conversations. The Full Story Behind Columbine High School Shooters Eric Harris And Dylan Klebold. The most persistent obstacle, however, was Klebolds mental state. Instead of sending it SWAT teams, police held their perimeter until after Harris and Klebold had killed themselves. Jefferson County Sheriffs Department via Getty Images. ", Says Hammer: "If you pull down the exhibit hall, that's not going to leave anything for the media except the members meeting, and you're going to have the wackos with all kinds of crazy resolutions, with all kinds of, of dressing like a bunch of hillbillies and idiots. Around the same time, leaders discussed how to respond to the shooting at Columbine High School in nearby Littleton, Colo. More than 20 years later, NPR has obtained secret recordings of those conversations. Heirloom Fine PortraitsDylan Klebold. Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in the school cafeteria during the massacre. Even after that, Harris did most of the shooting. His on-again-off-again friend Eric Harris had missed morning classes. 11; Overwhelmingly, the offender is a single shooter (98 percent), primarily male . At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric . The NRA considered other options as well, as illustrated by this exchange: NRA OFFICIAL KAYNE ROBINSON: Is there something concrete that we can offer? On April 20, 1999, two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver. What changed between August 10, 1998 his last suicide threat and the attack on April 20, 1999, is unknown. to release the bodycam videos and has shared little about a third-party probe of its police force. The Chicago Tribune reported that in the videos, Harris and Klebold had their friends pretend to be jocks, and they pretended to be gunmen shooting them. The production included practical effects for gunshot wounds. When the bombs failed to detonate, Harris and Klebold began their shooting spree. They slowly drifted to the peripheries of their community, actively giving each other a Hitler salute as a greeting or while bowling together. The Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colo., was at the time the deadliest school shooting since the late 1960s, threatening to provide a tragic backdrop to the NRA's previously scheduled annual convention in Denver. Through journals left behind by Harris and Klebold, investigators eventually discovered the teens had been planning for a year to bomb the school in an attack similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post via Getty Images. The west entryway to Columbine High School, with flags marking points where bullet casings were found. An affidavit for a search warrant had been written. Columbine High SchoolEric Harris, as photographed for the Columbine yearbook. Harris and Klebold met in middle school but didnt become inseparable until midway through high school. Other people didnt think for themselves and would never survive a Doom Test, Harris thought. Until January of 1998, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold lived fairly normal lives. So it's a double-edged sword.". Updates? Members of a police SWAT march to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., April 20, 1999. [b] The perpetrators, 12th grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. April 20, 1999. Unmistakable. 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. 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. They discuss the role of Republican politicians in the Columbine fallout as well and say they too are looking to the NRA for guidance. Columbine High School massacre Tools On April 20, 1999, a school shooting and attempted bombing occurred at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. Of course, Klebold was also severely depressed and both he and Harris developed an obsession with Adolf Hitler shortly before the events of April 20, 1999, but video games were merely a more digestible target for the media to latch onto. 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. Corrections? Mark Leffingwell/Getty ImagesA pump-action shotgun and assault rifle used in the Columbine High School shooting. Dylan Klebold (left) and Eric Harris. Once successfully completed, both boys were deemed rehabilitated and given clean records. March 6, 1999. On TV, the sheriff labeled Brooks Brown an accomplice to silence him. For some reason, though, that information was not shared and the search warrant went unsigned. Had the presiding judge seen the Browns report, or if the resultant search warrant had been executed, Harris would have been rejected and jailed for the van theft and the police would have found his growing pipe bomb arsenal. But other school shootings barely made a blip on the national stage. He heard a tap at the window and turned to see Harris and Klebold, dressed in black, sitting in a tree. What they didnt know, however, was that Harris and Klebold had been arrested for a completely different felony: breaking into a parked van and stealing electronics equipment.
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