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. Columbine shooting. He was just casually walking, said Wade Frank, a senior at the time. Soon after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, senior leaders of the National Rifle Association huddled on a conference call to consider canceling their annual convention, scheduled just days later and a few miles away. When emergency services arrived, the pair planned, they would detonate bombs attached to Klebolds car and demolish any rescue efforts. This union, of course, didnt turn into the blueprint for a school shooting overnight. Klebold writes in florid, morose prose and poetry about God, self-medicating with alcohol, cutting himself, and his persistent thoughts of suicide. but before I leave this worthless place, I will kill who ever I deam [sic] unfit for anything at all. On the morning of Tuesday, April 20, 1999, Columbine High School senior Brooks Brown noted something strange. Showing Editorial results for columbine high school massacre. They want us to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief. 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. The shooting happened more than a year ago, on April 25, after police responded to a report of a man with a gun at the Meijer store on Lake Lansing Road. In an apparent answer to his parents concerns about his future, he wrote: THIS is what I want to do with my life!, Almost exactly a year before the Columbine shooting, Harris came the closest to explaining why he would shoot up a school. Jefferson County Sheriffs Department via Getty Images. His on-again-off-again friend Eric Harris had missed morning classes. 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. However, the sadism on display was extreme, with anyone who was injured or crying out of sheer terror immediately becoming a priority for the shooters. Just before New Year, the local gun shop called his house saying the high capacity magazines hed ordered for his rifle had arrived. Unfortunately, none of this was discovered or taken seriously before it was too late for the Columbine shooters. The first few years after the shooting, DeAngelis said his weight dropped and he went to the emergency room several times, mistaking anxiety for a heart attack. Is there anybody we ought to be talking to? It was also when their behavior changed, with Harris becoming bolder and stranger while the impressionable Klebold followed suit. In that moment, the anger already building inside Eric Harris found a target. After slightly under an hour of terrorizing and traumatizing some 1,800 students in ways that would haunt them for the rest of their lives, the two shooters committed suicide in the library. For Wakefield and many others who attended high school in the years shortly after the Columbine High School shooting, on April 20, 1999, the tragedy became a cultural touchstone, imprinting itself . Colorado's governor has signed four gun control bills five months after a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub. Evidence, including the propane bombs, presented to the public five years after the Columbine shooting. Eric Harris (left) and Dylan Klebold in the school cafeteria during the Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999. They reflect on how surviving transformed them from carefree teenagers to terrified and bitter young adults. They're just waiting to know. Mark Leffingwell/Getty ImagesA pump-action shotgun and assault rifle used in the Columbine High School shooting. They injured 21 additional people, and three more were injured while . They slowly drifted to the peripheries of their community, actively giving each other a Hitler salute as a greeting or while bowling together. 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. March 6, 1999. DeAngelis herded them into a gym storage area. reaching back to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. . From there, they began to shoot anyone they encountered and deigned worth their time. And so anything we do here is going to be a matter of trying to decide the best of a whole bunch of very, very bad choices.". When the bombs failed to detonate, Harris and Klebold began their shooting spree. Born on September 11, 1981 in Lakewood, Colorado, Dylan Klebold was considered gifted as early as grammar school. 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. Young women head to a location near Columbine High School where students and faculty members were evacuated after two gunmen went on a shooting rampage in the school in the southwest Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo., April 20, 1999. Many people wonder why they did this. Sometimes after a high-profile mass shooting, states will tighten up gun laws, requiring background checks, restricting the age for buying guns, reducing the sale of assault-type weapons or banning the sale of high capacity magazines, said Garrett. "I think the evidence will show there were more than two people involved in this," the sheriff said. They were hooting and hollering and getting a big joy out of this.. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? As the son of a geophysicist father and a mother who worked with the disabled, his upper-middle-class upbringing and well-meaning family didnt seem like contributing factors to his eventual killing spree. hide caption. He did not say how many students had mentioned the third person. We are in deep s*** on this deal. Public DomainDrawings from the journal of Eric Harris. "When we lost control of a situation and the result was a half a million members, the president of the United States bailing out on us and a firestorm of negative media that if you went back and looked at, it was probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars in opposition to us and our point of view.". "When you take those different pieces of the puzzle, put them together," he said, "I think we have a better chance of stopping these things.". A page from Eric Harris journal showing drawings and notes related to guns and, Jefferson County Sheriffs Department via Getty Images. By spring 1998, they were already planning Judgement Day or NBK, shorthand for the film Natural Born Killers. They acquired a fourth weapon, a bomb, from a coworker at the pizza place. 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. show them who is god.. "The first thing that crossed my mind was, 'This has to be a senior prank,'" he told ABC News. One student saw either Harris or Klebold (the account remains unclear) shoot a kid at point-blank range, in the back of the head. Jefferson County Sheriffs Department via Getty ImagesColumbine shooter Eric Harris practices shooting a weapon at a makeshift shooting range. DeAngelis tried to get back inside the school, but officers said he couldn't -- they had to secure the perimeter and wait for SWAT. In this image from television, a Columbine High School student is rescued by emergency personnel during the shooting spree at the school in the southwest Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo., April 20, 1999. March 6, 1999. May 5, 1999 Web posted at: 8:41 a.m. EDT (1241 GMT). April 20, 1999. The turning point seems to be when, after killing one student in the library, Harris shotgun recoiled into his face, breaking his nose. "If they hear shots, they're going to keep moving closer and closer to it until they confront the shooter.". All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. Mario Tama/AFP via Getty Images to release the bodycam videos and has shared little about a third-party probe of its police force. The boys and their coworkers would routinely goof around during slow hours, drinking beer and shooting bottle rockets off the roof. "What we're trying to avoid here, I think, is what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing," says PR adviser McQueen. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. VT is also the 3rd worst "public shooting". A week before that bombing, the NRA put out a fundraising letter calling the ATF "jackbooted government thugs," and after the bombing, LaPierre had defended this rhetoric. 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. The police were another problem. 11; Overwhelmingly, the offender is a single shooter (98 percent), primarily male . Kevin Moloney/Getty Images Indeed, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fostered an unhealthy interest in Hitler, Nazi iconography, and the violence of the Third Reich. 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. Brown was confused, but that was nothing new in his relationship with Harris. It was one of the deadliest school shooting incidents in American history. The Columbine Massacre took 15 lives (including the two shooters) and wounded 24. 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. They learned about it in the newspaper. Once Farber was safely inside a home, she heard shots across the parking lot. One girl was shot in the chest nine times. Circa 1998. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were charged with theft, criminal mischief, and criminal trespassing for breaking into a van and stealing belongings therein. "The dirty secret of this day and age is that political gain and media ratings all too often bloom on fresh graves. Sketches and notes taken from Eric Harris journal. 'Infatuated' With Columbine: Threats and Fear, 20 Years After a Massacre 627 Sol Pais, a Florida high school student who was wanted in Colorado over threats she made to schools there, was found. An NRA spokesperson called the story a "hit piece" and complained that the NRA was denied the tape. As he wrote in a note on the journals first page, Fact: People are so unaware well, Ignorance is bliss I guess that would explain my depression.. Unable to drive yet, he relied on Brown for rides to and from school. In that time, they had murdered 12 students and one teacher in what was then the deadliest school shooting in American history. The teens then went back outside to their cars to wait for the bombs to go off. Later, Klebold bought a semi-automatic pistol from another friend behind the pizza shop. He enjoyed bowling, was a devoted fan of the Boston Red Sox, and even did audio-visual work for school productions. This is not a time for political discussions or public policy debates." At first, he thought they were fireworks. One of the big issues in Columbine was law enforcement wasn't trained to go after the shooter. "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. The Full Story Behind Columbine High School Shooters Eric Harris And Dylan Klebold. Feb. 26, 2004. The Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, occurred when two teens went on a shooting spree, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others, before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. 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. Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were hardly the bullied outcasts bent on revenge that they were made out to be they wanted to see the world burn. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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. hide caption, Charlton Heston, then the NRA's president, delivered a defiant message at the organization's 1999 meeting: "Why us? Mourners visit a memorial of crosses on a hill overlooking Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., on May 1, 1999. A pretty standard childhood of baseball, video games, and studious learning comprised Klebolds early years. Stream thousands of hours of acclaimed series, probing documentaries and captivating specials commercial-free in HISTORY Vault.