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Le Manuel numérique max - Belin Education

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Votre manuel numérique partout, tout le temps par Belin Éducation. Accès libre gratuit sur internet. Conçu par et pour les enseignants et les élèves. Conforme RGPD et CNIL, compatible GAR et ENT.

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The ou article zéro ? Exercice anglais - Anglais-rapide

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The ou article zéro ? Exercice anglais Pour télécharger et imprimer cette page d' exercice en PDF gratuit, cliquez-ici ! Les corrections se trouvent en bas de page. Exercice Faut-il utiliser l'article 'the' dans les phrases suivantes ? Have you seen the- salt? Do you take the- sugar in your tea?

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Fill in with THE or O

1. .........guns are the heritage of ...........wild west .

2. ...........rifles sold here are very expensive.

3. ..............citizens in ........... area have many firearms.

4. ................weapons are prohibited in this state but allowed in other parts of .......USA.

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1. Il ya beaucoup de morts aux Etats Unis par armes à feu

2. Les armes à feu sont la première cause de mortalité aux USA

3. Les munitions sont en vente dans les supermarchés

4. Les supermarchés de ma ville ne vendent pas d'armes

5. Les citoyens Américains aiment leurs pistolets

6. Les citoyens de cet état peuvent acheter des armes automatiques.

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http://data.over-blog-kiwi.com/0/09/60/71/201210/ob_b60c6a_22-getting-a-gun-in-colorado.mp3

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The Columbine High School massacre was a  school shooting that took place on April 20, 1999, at Columbine high school in Columbine,Colorado United States.

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A rendre dans travail à faire dans MBN
Write a sequel to the story Nineteen Minutes
Write 200 words
Use the method How to write a story
Diaporama sur ce padlet

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/25/mass-indianapolis-shooting-kills-five-including-pregnant-woman?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1611578267

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https://quizlet.com/fr/422401048/gun-culture-flash-cards/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYFRzf2Xww

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A Brief History of the USA - Bowling for Columbine - Michael Moore

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The following transcript is from a cartoon in the film. It was inspired by the work of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the animated series South Park.

A brief History of the United States of America

Now, it's time for a brief History of the United States of America... Hi, boys and girls! Ready to get started?

Once upon a time, there were these people in Europe called 'pilgrims' and they were ……….of being persecuted. So they all got in a boat and sailed to the New World where they wouldn't have to be scared ever again. (Oh, I'm so relaxed. I feel so much safer.)

But as soon as they arrived, they were greeted by ……... and they got scared all over again. (Injuns!) So they……...them all. Now, you'd think wiping out a race of people would calm them down, but no. Instead, they started getting……….of each other.

(Witch!) So they burned…………. In 1775 they started killing the British, so they could be free. And it worked.

But they still didn't feel safe. So they passed a second ……….. which said every white man could keep his ……...(I loves my gun, loves my gun. ) which brings us to the genius idea of ………..

You see, boys and girls, the white people back then were also afraid of doing any work. So they went to ……..., kidnapped thousands of ……..., brought them back to America, and forced them to work very hard for no ………. And I don't mean 'no money' like: (I work at Wal Mart and make no money.) I mean zero dollars. Nothing, nada, zip. Doing it that way made the USA the richest country in the world.

So did having all that money and free help calm the white people down? No way. They got even more………... That's because after two hundred years of slavery, the black people now outnumbered the white people in many parts of the South. Well, you can pretty much guess what came next: the slaves started……….. There were uprisings and the old masters' heads got chopped off and when white people heard of this, they were freaking out and going (I want to live! Don't …………..me, big black man. )

Well, just in the nick of time came Samuel ………….., who, in 1836 invented the first weapon ever that could be fired over and over without having to reload. And all the settlers were like: Yee hah! But it was too late. The North soon won the ………………. and the slaves were ………….. Yup, they were free now to go chop all the old masters' heads off. And everybody was like: (Oh, no, we're gonna die.) But the freed slaves took no revenge. They just wanted to live in peace.

But you couldn't convince the white people of this. So they formed the ……………..and, in 1871 the same year the Klan became an illegal……………………... organization another group was founded: the National Rifle ……………....

Soon, politicians passed one of the first gun laws, making it illegal for any black person to own one. It was a great year for America, the KKK and the NRA. Of course, they had nothing to do with each other and this was just a coincidence. One group legally promoted responsible gun ……………..and the other group shot and ……………. black people.

And that's the way it was all the way till 1955 when a black …………….broke the law by ………………………... to move to the back of the bus. White people just couldn't believe it. (Huh? Why won't she move? What's going on?) Man, all Hell broke loose. Black people everywhere started demanding their …………….... White people had a major, freaky feel meltdown and they were all like: (Run away! Run away!) And they did. They all ran fleeing to the ……………….., where it was all white and safe and clean. And they went out and bought a quarter of a billion guns. And pu………………..on their doors, alarms in their houses, and gates around the neighborhoods. And finally, they were all ……………….and secure and snug as a bug.

And everyone  lived happily ever after

Bowling for Columbine Michael Moore

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Matt Stone interviewed in "Bowling for Columbine"

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Michael Moore - Bowling for Columbine (2002) - Movie Trailer

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Asian-Americans in Utah living with fear since massacre in Atlanta

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Utah Sen. Jani Iwamoto said she's received phone calls and emails from members of Utah's Asian American and Pacific-Islander community who report they are living in fear since the massacre in Atlanta that left seven Asian women dead, and since attacks on Asian-Americans in other states like California.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SL4cYZc6ImVbnvOcpRKifLaAHRrHJi6d/view

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Il y a eu de nombreux massacres scolaires qui ont été causés par des élèves qui possédaient des armes à feu.Les américains qui ont toujours eu peur de leur environnement ont adopté les lois sur les armes à feu. Suzan Klebold dont le fils était l'un des tueurs de Columbine fait des conférences sur le danger des armes à feu maintenenant.

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https://www.italy24news.com/2021/03/usa-massacre-in-a-colorado-supermarket-gunman-kills-ten-people-and-is-stopped.html

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BOULDER, COLORADO - A shooting at a Colorado supermarket killed multiple people Monday, including a police officer, and a suspect was in custody, authorities said.

Boulder police Cmdr. Kerry Yamaguchi said at a news conference that the suspect was being treated but didn't give more details on the shooting or how many people were killed. Officers escorted a shirtless man with blood running down his leg out of the store in handcuffs, but authorities would not say if that was the suspect.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said authorities know how many people were killed and suggested they are not releasing the number because they need to notify families of the victims.

Yamaguchi said police were still investigating and didn't have details on motive.

A man who had just left the store in Boulder, Dean Schiller, told The Associated Press that he heard gunshots and saw three people lying face down, two in the parking lot and one near the doorway. He said he "couldn't tell if they were breathing."

Video posted on YouTube showed one person on the floor inside the King Soopers store and two more outside on the ground, but the extent of their injuries wasn't clear. What sounds like two gunshots are also heard at the beginning of the video.

One person was taken from the shooting scene to Foothills Hospital in Boulder, said Rich Sheehan, spokesman for Boulder Community Health, which operates the hospital. Sheehan said he could not provide additional details but did say that "we have been notified we will not be receiving any additional patients."

Law enforcement vehicles and officers massed outside the store, including SWAT teams, and at least three helicopters landed on the roof. The city is home to the University of Colorado and is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Denver.

Some windows at the front of the store were broken. At one point, authorities over a loudspeaker said the building was surrounded and that "you need to surrender." They said to come out with hands up and unarmed.

Sarah Moonshadow told the Denver Post that two shots rang out just after she and her son, Nicolas Edwards, finished buying strawberries. She said she told her son to get down and then "we just ran."

Once they got outside, she said they saw a body in the parking lot. Edwards said police were speeding into the lot and pulled up next to the body.

"I knew we couldn't do anything for the guy," he said. "We had to go."

James Bentz told the Post that he was in the meat section when he heard what he thought was a misfire, then a series of pops.

"I was then at the front of a stampede," he said.

Bentz said he jumped off a loading dock out back to escape and that younger people were helping older people off of it.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis tweeted a statement that his "heart is breaking as we watch this unspeakable event unfold in our Boulder community." He called it "very much an active situation" and said the state was "making every public safety resource available to assist the Boulder County Sheriff's Department as they work to secure the store."

Boulder police had told people to shelter in place amid a report of an "armed, dangerous individual" about 3 miles (5 kilometers) away from the grocery store but later lifted it and police vehicles were seen leaving the residential area near downtown and the University of Colorado. They had said they were investigating if that report was related to the shooting at the supermarket but said at the evening news conference that it wasn't related.

The FBI said it's helping in the investigation at the request of Boulder police.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the shooting.

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Police: Multiple People Killed at Colorado Supermarket

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A shooting at a Colorado supermarket killed multiple people Monday, including a police officer, and a suspect was in custody, authorities said. Boulder police Cmdr. Kerry Yamaguchi said at a news conference that the suspect was being treated but didn't give more details on the shooting or how many people were killed.

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https://assets.lls.fr/pages/6223952/ANG.2de.13.ACT3.p186.emma-gonzales_coupe.mp4

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Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

Part of mass shootings in the United States and school shootings in the United States

Location

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Sandy Hook, Connecticut, U.S.

Date

December 14, 2012; 10 years ago
c. 9:35 - [1]c. 9:40a.m. [2][3] EST ( UTC−05:00)

Target

Students and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School

Mass shooting, murder-suicide, pedicide, matricide, spree shooting, school shooting, mass murder

Weapons

Deaths

28 (27 at the school, including the perpetrator; and the perpetrator's mother at home)[5][6]

Injured

2[7]

Perpetrator

Adam Lanza[8][9]

Motive

Unknown[10][11]

Litigation

Wrongful death lawsuit against Remington Arms settled for $73 million[12]

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and the other six were adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, Lanza fatally shot his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza died by suicide, shooting himself in the head.

The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in Connecticut history and the deadliest at an elementary school in U.S. history. The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals to make the background-check system universal, and for new federal and state gun legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines which can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition.

A November 2013 report issued by the Connecticut State Attorney's office concluded that Lanza acted alone and planned his actions, but provided no indication why he did so, or why he targeted the school. A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that Lanza had Asperger syndrome and as a teenager had depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but concluded that they had "neither caused nor led to his murderous acts". The report went on to say, "his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems[...] combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence[...] (and) access to deadly weapons[...] proved a recipe for mass murder."

Background

As of November 30, 2012, 456 children were enrolled in kindergarten through fourth grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The school's security protocols had recently been upgraded, requiring visitors to be individually admitted after visual and identification review by video monitor. Doors to the school were locked at 9:30a.m. each day, after morning arrivals.

Newtown is in Fairfield County, Connecticut, about 17 miles (30 km) from New Haven, 30 miles (50 km) from Hartford, and 60 miles (100 km) from New York City. Violent crime had been rare in the town of 28,000 residents; there was only one homicide in the town in the ten years before the school shooting.

Under the Connecticut gun laws at the time, the 20-year-old Lanza was old enough to carry a long gun, such as a rifle or shotgun, but too young to own or carry handguns. The guns he used had been purchased legally by his mother.

Murder of Nancy Lanza

Sometime before 9:30a.m. EST on December 14, 2012, Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy Lanza, aged 52, with a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle at their Newtown home. Investigators later found her body clad in pajamas, in her bed, with four gunshot wounds to her head. Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in his mother's car.

Red circle: Sandy Hook Elementary SchoolBlack circle: Lanza household

Mass shooting begins

Shortly after 9:35a.m., armed with his mother's Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle and ten magazines with 30 rounds each, Lanza shot his way through a glass panel next to the locked front entrance doors of the school. He was wearing black clothing, yellow earplugs, sunglasses, a black hat and an olive green utility vest. Initial reports that he was wearing body armor were incorrect. Some of those present heard the initial shots on the school intercom system, which was being used for morning announcements.

Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach were meeting with other faculty members when they heard, but did not recognize, gunshots. Hochsprung, Sherlach, and lead teacher Natalie Hammond went into the hall to determine the source of the sounds and encountered Lanza. A faculty member who was at the meeting said that the three women called out "Shooter! Stay put!" which alerted their colleagues to the danger and saved their lives. An aide heard gunshots. A teacher hiding in the math lab heard school janitor Rick Thorne yell, "Put the gun down!" Lanza killed both Hochsprung and Sherlach. Hammond was hit first in the leg, and then sustained another gunshot wound. She lay still in the hallway and then, not hearing any more noise, crawled back to the conference room and pressed her body against the door to keep it closed. She was later treated at Danbury Hospital.

A nine-year-old boy said he heard the shooter say "Put your hands up!" and someone else say "Don't shoot!" He also heard many people yelling and many gunshots over the intercom while he, his classmates, and his teacher took refuge in a closet in the gymnasium. Diane Day, a school therapist who had been at the faculty meeting with Hochsprung, heard screaming followed by more gunshots. A second teacher, who was a substitute kindergarten teacher, was wounded in the attack. While she was closing a door further down the hallway, she was hit in the foot with a bullet that ricocheted. Lanza never entered her classroom.

After killing Hochsprung and Sherlach, Lanza entered the main office but apparently did not see the people hiding there, and returned to the hallway. School nurse Sarah (Sally) Cox, 60, hid under a desk in her office. She later described seeing the door opening and Lanza's boots and legs facing her desk from approximately twenty feet (six meters) away. He remained standing for a few seconds before turning around and leaving. She and the school secretary Barbara Halstead called 9-1-1 and hid in a first-aid supply closet for as long as four hours. Janitor Rick Thorne ran through hallways, alerting classrooms.

Classroom shootings

Floorplan of Sandy Hook Elementary; Classrooms 8 (Rousseau/D'Avino), 10 (Soto/Murphy) and 12 (Roig) are labeled along with the main office (o) and Conference Room 9 (Hochsprung/Sherlach/Hammond)

Lanza entered Room 8, a first-grade classroom where Lauren Rousseau, a substitute teacher, had herded her first-grade students to the back of the room, and was trying to hide them in a bathroom, when Lanza forced his way into the classroom. Rousseau, Rachel D'Avino (a behavioral therapist who had been employed for a week at the school to work with a special needs student), and fifteen students in Rousseau's class were killed. Fourteen of the children were dead at the scene; one injured child was taken to a hospital for treatment, but was later declared dead. Most of the teachers and students were found crowded together in the bathroom. A six-year-old girl, the sole survivor, was found by police in the classroom following the shooting. She hid in a corner of the classroom's bathroom during the shooting. Her family's pastor said she survived by playing dead. When she reached her mother, she said, "Mommy, I'm okay, but all my friends are dead." The child described the shooter as "a very angry man". A girl hiding in a bathroom with two teachers told police that she heard a boy in the classroom screaming, "Help me! I don't want to be here!" to which Lanza responded, "Well, you're here," followed by "hammering" sounds.

Lanza also went to Room 10, another first-grade classroom nearby; at this point, there are conflicting reports about the order of events. According to some reports, the classroom's teacher, Victoria Leigh Soto, had concealed some of the students in a closet or bathroom, and some of the other students were hiding under desks. Soto was walking back to the classroom door to lock it when Lanza entered the classroom. Lanza walked to the back of the classroom, saw the children under the desks, and shot them. First-grader Jesse Lewis shouted at his classmates to run for safety, and several of them did. Lewis was looking at Lanza when Lanza fatally shot him. Another account, given by a surviving child's father, said that Soto had moved the children to the back of the classroom, and that they were seated on the floor when Lanza entered. According to this account, neither Lanza nor any of the occupants of the classroom spoke. Lanza stared at the people on the floor, pointed the gun at a boy seated there, but did not fire. The boy ran out of the classroom. The final report into the shooting concluded that the sequence of events in Rooms 8 and 10 was "indeterminate".

A Hartford Courant report said that six of the children who escaped did so when Lanza stopped shooting, either because his weapon jammed or he erred in reloading it. Earlier reports said that, as Lanza entered her classroom, Soto told him that the children were in the auditorium. When several of the children came out of their hiding places and tried to run for safety, Lanza fatally shot them. Soto put herself between her students and the shooter, who then fatally shot her. Anne Marie Murphy, the special education teacher who worked with special-needs students in Soto's classroom, was found covering six-year-old Dylan Hockley, who also died. Soto and four children were found dead in the classroom. Soto was near the north wall of the room with a set of keys nearby. One child was taken to the hospital, but was pronounced dead. Six surviving children from the class and a school bus driver took refuge at a nearby home. According to the official report released by the state's attorney, nine children ran from Soto's classroom, and police found two hiding in a class bathroom. Five of Soto's students were killed.

Survivors' eyewitness accounts

Two third-grade students, chosen as classroom helpers, were walking down the hallway to the office to deliver the morning attendance sheet as the shooting began. Teacher Abbey Clements pulled both children into her classroom, where they hid.

Shooter's suicide

The police heard the final shot at 9:40:03a.m. They believed that it was Lanza shooting himself in the lower rear portion of his head with the Glock 20SF in classroom 10. Lanza's body was found wearing a pale green pocket vest over a black polo shirt, over a black T-shirt, black sneakers, black fingerless gloves, black socks, and a black canvas belt. Other objects found in the vicinity of Lanza included a black Boonie hat and thin frame glasses. The Glock was found, apparently jammed, near Lanza, and the rifle was found several feet away from him. A 9mm SIG Sauer P226, which had not been fired during the incident, was found on Lanza.

Immediate aftermath

Authorities determined that Lanza reloaded frequently during the shootings, sometimes firing only 15 rounds from a 30-round magazine. He shot all but two of his victims multiple times. Most of the shooting took place in two first-grade classrooms near the entrance of the school. The students among the victims totaled eight boys and twelve girls, all either six or seven years old, and the six adults were all women who worked at the school. Bullets were also found in at least three cars parked outside the school, leading police to believe that he fired at a teacher who was standing near a window. When police interviewed survivors, a teacher recalled hearing Lanza curse several times, as well as say such things as, "Look at me!" and "Come over here!" and "Look at them!"

Police response

The first call to 911 was around 9:35a.m. Newtown 911 police dispatch first broadcast that there was a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School (SHES) at 9:36a.m., about 30 seconds after they received the first call. Connecticut State Police (CSP) were dispatched at 9:37a.m. Newtown police arrived at the school street at 9:39a.m., approximately three-and-a-half minutes after the 911 call, and Connecticut State Police arrived at the school street at 9:46a.m. Newtown police first entered the school at 9:45a.m., approximately nine minutes after the first 911 call and approximately ten minutes after the shooting started. This was approximately five minutes after the last shot was heard. No shots were fired by the police.

The Newtown police and Connecticut State Police mobilized local police dog and police tactical units, a bomb squad, and a state police helicopter. Police locked down the school and began evacuating the survivors room by room, escorting groups of students and adults away from the school. They swept the school for other shooters at least four times.

At approximately 10:00a.m., Danbury Hospital sent extra medical personnel in expectation of having to treat numerous victims. Three wounded patients were evacuated to the hospital, where two children were later declared dead. The other was an unidentified adult.

The New York City medical examiner dispatched a portable morgue to assist the authorities. The victims' bodies were removed from the school and formally identified during the night after the shooting. A state trooper was assigned to each victim's family to protect their privacy and provide them with information.

On December 4, 2013, seven 911 calls relating to the shooting were made public.

Investigation

Investigators did not find a suicide note or any messages referring to the planning of the attack. Janet Robinson, superintendent of Newtown schools, said she had not found any connection between Lanza's mother and the school, in contrast to initial media reports that said Lanza's mother had worked there. Police also investigated whether Lanza was the person who had been in an altercation with four staff members at Sandy Hook School the day before the massacre. It was presumed that he killed two of the four staff members involved in the altercation (the principal and the psychologist) and wounded the third (the lead teacher) in the attack; the fourth staff member was not at the school that day. The state police said they did not know of any reports about any altercations at the school.

Police sources initially reported that Lanza's brother Ryan Lanza, then aged 24, was the perpetrator. This was probably because Adam was carrying Ryan's identification, Ryan told The Jersey Journal. Ryan, who lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, and was at his job in New York City at the time of the shooting, voluntarily submitted to questioning by New Jersey State Police, Connecticut State Police, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police said he was not considered a suspect, and he was not taken into custody. Ryan said he had not been in touch with Adam since 2010; when asked why, Ryan said his brother was "sick", "[doesn't] talk to anyone", and that Ryan "didn't know him anymore". Connecticut State Police indicated their concern about misinformation being posted on social media sites and threatened prosecution of anyone involved with such activities. Ryan was also mistakenly reported to have mourned his mother and brother on social media and to have been interviewed by the New York Post. A spokesperson for the Lanza family later said an impostor gave the interview.

A large quantity of unused ammunition was recovered inside the school along with three semi-automatic firearms found with Lanza: a .223-caliber Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, a 10mm Glock 20SF handgun, and a 9mm SIG Sauer P226 handgun. Outside the school, an Izhmash Saiga-12 shotgun was found in the car Lanza had driven to the school, a black Honda Civic.

Shortly after the shooting, police announced that Lanza used the rifle to kill the victims at the school. At a press conference on December 15, Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, the Chief Medical Examiner of Connecticut, was asked about the wounds, and replied "All the ones that I know of at this point were caused by the long weapon." When asked if the children suffered before dying, Carver replied by stating that "If so, not for very long". Carver, whose office autopsied the victims and who personally performed seven, said the injuries were "devastating" and that parents identified their children from photographs to spare them the sight. All the child victims were first-graders, and all were killed with the Bushmaster XM15. Carver said the bullets used were "designed in such a fashion the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in."

Investigators evaluated Lanza's body, looking for evidence of drugs or medication through toxicology tests. Unusually for an investigation of this type, DNA testing of Lanza was utilized. The results of the toxicology report were published in October 2013, and stated that no alcohol or drugs were found in his system. Lanza's autopsy showed no tumors or gross deformities in his brain.

Lanza removed the hard drive from his computer and intentionally damaged it before the shooting, creating a challenge for investigators to recover data. As of the final report's publication, recovering data from the damaged drive had proven unsuccessful. Police believe that Lanza extensively researched earlier mass shootings, as they had found that Lanza had downloaded videos relating to the Columbine High School massacre, other shootings and two videos of suicide by gunshot.

Details of the investigation were reported by law enforcement officials at a meeting of the International Association of Police Chiefs and Colonels held during the week of March 11, 2013. An article published in the New York Daily News on March 17, 2013, provided purported details of this report by an anonymous law enforcement veteran who had attended the meeting. The source stated that the investigation had found that Lanza had created a 7-by-4-foot sized spreadsheet listing around 500 mass murderers and the weapons they used, which was considered to have taken years of work and to have been used by Lanza as a "score sheet". On March 18, 2013, Lt. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police responded that the information from this meeting was "law enforcement sensitive information" and considered the release to be a leak.

The March 28 documents also provided details on items found at Lanza's home, including three samurai swords, a newspaper article about the Northern Illinois University shooting, and a National Rifle Association certificate. The NRA denied that Adam Lanza or Nancy Lanza were members and reporters noted that the NRA site provides training certificate completion templates for courses offered by NRA Certified Instructors. A gun safe was found in a bedroom and investigators found more than 1,400 rounds of ammunition and other firearms. At home, Lanza had access to three more firearms: a .45 Henry rifle, a .30 Enfield rifle, and a .22 Marlin rifle. These were legally owned by Lanza's mother, who was described as a gun enthusiast. According to , authorities also found a photograph of Lanza holding a gun to his head at his home following his death.

According to The New York Times, law enforcement officials commented that Lanza would spend most of his time in his basement doing solitary activities. According to the same officials, it also appeared that Lanza "may have taken target practice in the basement". The Hartford Courant reported that Lanza had edited Wikipedia articles related to mass shootings with the username Kaynbred.

Final reports

State Attorney's report

Report of the Office of the Child Advocate

The Report of the Office of the Child Advocate concluded: "There was not one thing that was necessarily the tipping point driving Lanza to commit the Sandy Hook shooting. Rather there was a cascade of events, many self-imposed, that included: loss of school; absence of work; disruption of the relationship with his one friend; virtually no personal contact with family; virtually total and increasing isolation; fear of losing his home and of a change in his relationship with Mrs. Lanza, his only caretaker and connection; worsening OCD; depression and anxiety; profound and possibly worsening anorexia; and an increasing obsession with mass murder occurring in the total absence of any engagement with the outside world. Adam increasingly lived in an alternate universe in which ruminations about mass shootings were his central preoccupation".

The authors also noted that despite multiple developmental and mental health problems, Lanza had not received adequate mental health treatment. They wrote: "It is fair to surmise that, had Lanza's mental illness been adequately treated in the last years of his life, one predisposing factor to the tragedy of Sandy Hook might have been mitigated".

The report also tentatively disagreed with the conclusions of the State Attorney about why Lanza targeted Sandy Hook. They noted that "According to the FBI, shooters are likely to target places or people that are familiar to them ... The elementary school may have been targeted because he could overpower people, a dynamic that is very important for mass shooters as they do not want to be thwarted".

Perpetrator

Adam Peter Lanza (April 22, 1992 - December 14, 2012) lived with his mother, Nancy Lanza, in Newtown, 5 miles (8 km) from the elementary school. He did not have a criminal record. He had access to guns through his mother, who was described as a "gun enthusiast who owned at least a dozen firearms". She often took her two sons to a local shooting range, where they learned to shoot. Lanza's father has said that he does not believe Nancy feared Lanza. She did not confide any fear of Lanza to her sister or to her best friend, slept with her bedroom door unlocked, and kept guns in the house.

Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary School for four and a half years. He began at Newtown Middle School in 2004, but according to his mother was "wracked by anxiety". She told friends that her son started getting upset in middle school because of frequent classroom changes during the day. The movement and noise were too stimulating and made him anxious. At one point his anxiety was so intense that she took him to the emergency room at Danbury Hospital. Because of the smaller class sizes, his mother moved him to a parochial school, St. Rose of Lima. According to a classmate at St. Rose of Lima, he entered "late in the school year", and he left in June 2005.

At age 14, he went to Newtown High School, where he was named to the honor roll in 2007. Students and teachers who knew him in high school described Lanza as "intelligent but nervous and fidgety". He avoided attracting attention and was uncomfortable socializing. He is not known to have had any close friends in school. Schoolwork often triggered his underlying sense of hopelessness and by 2008, when he turned 16, he was only going to school occasionally. The intense anxiety Lanza experienced at the time suggests his autism might have been exacerbated by the hormonal shifts of adolescence. He was taken out of high school and home-schooled by his mother and father. He earned a GED. In 2008 and 2009, he also attended some classes at Western Connecticut State University.

Early living and his developmental and mental health problems

Lanza was born and partially raised in Kingston, New Hampshire, about 7 miles (10 km) southwest of Exeter, 30 miles (50 km) east of Manchester, and 50 miles (80 km) north of Boston. While living in New Hampshire at the time, Lanza exhibited developmental challenges before the age of three. These included communication and sensory difficulties, socialization delays, and repetitive behaviors. He was seen by the New Hampshire Birth to Three intervention program and referred to special education preschool services. Once at elementary school, he was diagnosed with a sensory-integration disorder. The sensory-processing disorder does not have official status by the medical community as a formal diagnosis but is a common characteristic of autism. His anxiety affected his ability to attend school and in 8th grade he was placed on "homebound" status, which is reserved for children who are too disabled, even with supports and accommodations, to attend school.

When he was 13, Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by a psychiatrist, Paul Fox. When he was 14, his parents took him to Yale University's Child Study Center, where he was also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He frequently washed his hands and changed his socks 20 times a day, to the point where his mother did three loads of laundry a day. He also sometimes went through a box of tissues in a day because he could not touch a doorknob with his bare hand.

Lanza was treated by Robert King, who recommended extensive support be put in place, and King's colleague Kathleen Koenig at the Yale Child Study Center prescribed the antidepressant Celexa. Lanza took the medication for three days. His mother Nancy reported: "On the third morning he complained of dizziness. By that afternoon he was disoriented, his speech was disjointed, he couldn't even figure out how to open his cereal box. He was sweating profusely ... it was actually dripping off his hands. He said he couldn't think ... He was practically vegetative." He never took the medication again. A report from the Office of the Child Advocate found that "Yale's recommendations for extensive special education supports, ongoing expert consultation, and rigorous therapeutic supports embedded into (Lanza's) daily life went largely unheeded."

In a 2013 interview, Peter Lanza said he suspected his son might have also had undiagnosed schizophrenia in addition to his other conditions. Lanza said that family members might have missed signs of the onset of schizophrenia and psychotic behavior during his son's adolescence because they mistakenly attributed his odd behavior and increasing isolation to Asperger syndrome. Because of concerns that published accounts of Lanza's autism could result in a backlash against others with the condition, autism advocates campaigned to clarify that autism is a brain-related developmental disorder rather than a mental illness. The violence Lanza demonstrated in the shooting is generally not seen in the autistic population and none of the psychiatrists he saw detected troubling signs of violence in his disposition.

Lanza appears to have had no contact with mental health providers after 2006. The report from the Office of the Child Advocate stated: "In the course of Lanza's entire life, minimal mental health evaluation and treatment (in relation to his apparent need) was obtained. Of the couple of providers that saw him, only one-the Yale Child Study Center -seemed to appreciate the gravity of (his) presentation, his need for extensive mental health and special education supports, and the critical need for medication to ease his obsessive-compulsive symptoms."

Investigators found Lanza was fascinated with mass shootings, such as the Columbine High School massacre. Among the clippings found in his room, there was a story from The New York Times about a man who shot at schoolchildren in 1891. His computer contained two videos of gunshot suicides, movies that showed school shootings, and two pictures of Lanza pointing guns at his own head.

Final months

According to a report by the Office of the Child Advocate in Connecticut in November 2014, Lanza may have had anorexia nervosa. The authors wrote that "Anorexia can produce cognitive impairment and it is likely that anorexia combined with an autism spectrum disorder and OCD compounded Lanza's risk for suicide". They also noted that at the time of his death, Lanza "was anorexic (he was six feet tall (183 cm) and weighed 112 pounds (51 kg)), to the point of malnutrition and resultant brain damage."

He was also living in almost total isolation in his room, spending most of his time on the internet playing World of Warcraft and other video games. The report stated that he "descended" into a world where his only communication with the outside world was with members of a cyber-community, "a small community of individuals that shared his dark and obsessive interest in mass murder".

In the weeks before the killings, Lanza's mother was considering moving him to another town. She planned to purchase a recreational vehicle for him to stay in so that potential purchasers could see the house without disturbing him. The Report of the Child Advocate stated that:

In the wake of Mrs Lanza's stated plan to move out of Newtown in 2012, and perhaps stimulated by fears of leaving the " comfort zone" of his home, Adam planned and executed the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. His severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems were combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence. Combined with access to deadly weapons, this proved a recipe for mass murder".

James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist at SUNY Upstate Medical University, was consulted about what motivated Lanza to kill. Knoll states that Lanza's final act conveyed a distinct message: "I carry profound hurt-I'll go ballistic and transfer it onto you."

Legal proceedings

On October 16, 2019, a jury awarded Leonard Pozner $450,000 for defamation by James Fetzer, who had co-written the book Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. The book claimed that Pozner had fabricated the death certificate of his son Noah, a six-year-old victim of the shooting. Fetzer said he would appeal the decision.

On December 15, 2014, nine families of the 26 victims of the shooting filed a class-action lawsuit in Connecticut against Bushmaster, Remington Arms, Camfour, a distributor of firearms, and the now-closed East Windsor store, Riverview Sales, where the gunman's rifle was purchased, seeking "unspecified" damages, claiming an exemption from the 2005 Federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) that would normally disallow such a suit as lacking standing. The plaintiffs allege that the XM15-E2S is suitable only for military and policing applications and that Bushmaster inappropriately marketed it to civilians. In January 2015, Bushmaster's attorneys petitioned to have the suit moved to federal court because, although the shooting took place in Connecticut, it is located in North Carolina. In February 2015, the victims' families' attorneys made a motion to move the suit back to state court. On April 14, 2016, a Connecticut court denied the defendants' motion to summarily dismiss the case. Lawyers for the defense filed a second motion for dismissal a month later. On October 14, 2016, the defendants' motion to dismiss the lawsuit was granted. The judge ruled the complaint was not valid per federal and Connecticut laws.

The families appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court. In March 2019, the court decided in a 4-3 vote to reverse parts of the trial court's rulings and remand the case back to Bridgeport Superior Court for additional hearings. It ruled that the families' appeal to the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, demonstrating that the gun manufacturers had used advertising that presented the weapons in an "unfair, unethical, or dangerous manner", with Remington seeking to "expand the market for [its] assault weapons through advertising campaigns that encouraged consumers ... to launch offensive assaults against their perceived enemies", was not prohibited by PLCAA, and thus that the plaintiffs had sufficient standing to argue their case at trial court. It also ruled that the plaintiffs can subpoena internal documents on how gun companies have marketed the AR-15. Remington asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the state court ruling, but in November 2019 the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, allowing the families' suit to proceed.

On April 17, 2018, radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was sued for defamation by three parents whose children were killed in the shooting. Prior to this, Jones said that the Sandy Hook shooting was "completely fake" and a "giant hoax" perpetrated by opponents of the Second Amendment. Jones claims he later believed the shooting was real. On May 23, 2018, six more families sued Jones for his claims. Jones was found to be in contempt of court by a Texas judge even before the trial started, failing to produce witnesses and materials relevant to the procedures. Consequently, Jones and InfoWars were fined a total of $126,000 in October and December 2019.

In October 2021, Jones was ordered to pay damages and was criticized by a judge for failing to hand over documents requested by the courts. Jones declared bankruptcy in April 2022 as a result of the defamation lawsuits caused by his claims that the shooting was a hoax.

On October 12, 2022, Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in damages to the families of Sandy Hook victims.

The school was closed indefinitely following the shooting, partially because it remained a crime scene. Sandy Hook students returned to classes on January 3, 2013, at Chalk Hill Middle School in nearby Monroe at the town's invitation. Chalk Hill at the time was an unused facility, refurbished after the shooting, with desks and equipment brought in from Sandy Hook Elementary. The Chalk Hill school was temporarily renamed "Sandy Hook". The University of Connecticut created a scholarship for the surviving children of the shootings.

On January 31, the Newtown school board voted unanimously to ask for police officer presence in all of its elementary schools; previously other schools in the district had such protection, but Sandy Hook had not been one of those.

On May 10, a task force of 28 appointed members voted to demolish the existing Sandy Hook Elementary school and have a new school built in its place. The $57 million proposed project was sent to the Newtown Board of Education for approval, to be followed by a public ballot. In October 2013, Newtown residents voted 4,504-558 in favor of the proposed demolition and reconstruction, to be funded by $50 million in state money. Demolition began on October 25 and was completed in December 2013 at a cost of nearly US$1.4 million.

After the town clerk's office was inundated with requests from the media, Connecticut House of Representatives Republican Dan Carter introduced legislation that would restrict access to public information available under the Freedom of Information Act. On June 5, both houses (Senate and House of Representatives) of the Connecticut state legislature passed a bill modifying the state's Freedom of Information Act in order to "prevent the release of crime-scene photos and video evidence from the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and other Connecticut homicides, concerned such records would be spread on the Internet." The bill then went on to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's desk for his signature. The bill creates a new exemption to the state's Freedom of Information Act. The release of photographs, film, video, digital or other visual images depicting a homicide victim is prevented if such records "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of the victim or the victim's surviving family members."

The Sandy Hook Promise Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, was formed to help survivors and families of the victims while also continuing the service of assisting others impacted by other shootings across the United States.

Obama's address in reaction to the shooting

President Barack Obama gave a televised address on the day of the shootings: "We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics." Obama expressed "enormous sympathy for families that are affected". He also ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and other U.S. federal government facilities worldwide in respect of the victims. On December 16, Obama traveled to Newtown where he met with victims' families and spoke at an interfaith vigil.

Dannel Malloy, the Governor of Connecticut, addressed the media the evening of the shootings near a local church holding a vigil for the victims, urging the people of Connecticut to come together and help each other. Malloy said, "Evil visited this community today, and it is too early to speak of recovery, but each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut, we are all in this together, we will do whatever we can to overcome this event, we will get through it." Hundreds of mourners, including Malloy, attended vigils in various churches in Newtown. On December 17, Malloy called for a statewide moment of silence and church bells to be tolled 26 times at 9:30 a.m. on December 21, exactly one week after the school shooting.

A makeshift memorial on Berkshire Road in Sandy Hook

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said: "our thanks go out to every teacher, staff member, and first responder who cared for, comforted, and protected children from harm, often at risk to themselves. We will do everything in our power to assist and support the healing and recovery of Newtown."

The day after the shootings, Lanza's father released a statement:

Our hearts go out to the families and friends who lost loved ones and to all those who were injured. Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy. No words can truly express how heartbroken we are. We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired.

Leaders from other countries and organizations throughout the world also offered their condolences through the weekend after the shooting.

President Obama posthumously honored the six adults with the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal on February 15, 2013. President Obama said "And then when Dawn Hochsprung, and Mary Sherlach, Vicki Soto, Lauren Rousseau, Rachel D'Avino, Anne Marie Murphy-when they showed up for work at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14th of last year, they expected a day like any other-doing what was right for their kids; spent a chilly morning readying classrooms and welcoming young students-they had no idea that evil was about to strike. And when it did, they could have taken shelter by themselves. They could have focused on their own safety, on their own wellbeing. But they didn't. They gave their lives to protect the precious children in their care. They gave all they had for the most innocent and helpless among us. And that's what we honor today-the courageous heart, the selfless spirit, the inspiring actions of extraordinary Americans, extraordinary citizens."

Sandy Hook conspiracy theories have become social phenomena, despite overwhelming contemporary coverage of the incident.

Gun control

The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals for making the background-check system universal, and for new federal and state legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition.

Within hours of the shooting, a We the People petition was started asking the White House to "immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress", and the gun control advocacy group the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reported that an avalanche of donations in the hours after the shooting caused its website to crash. Five days later, President Obama announced that he would make gun control a "central issue" of his second term, and he created a gun violence task force, to be headed by Vice President Joe Biden. On January 16, 2013, Obama signed 23 executive orders and proposed 12 congressional actions regarding gun control. His proposals included universal background checks on firearms purchases, an assault weapons ban, and a high-capacity magazine ban limiting capacity to 10 cartridges.

On December 21, 2012, the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre said gun-free school zones attract killers and that another gun ban would not protect Americans. He called on Congress to appropriate funds to hire armed police officers for every American school and announced that the NRA would create the National School Shield Emergency Response Program to help. After LaPierre's press conference, the Brady Campaign asked for donations to support its gun control advocacy and asked NRA members "who believe like we do, that we are better than this" to join its campaign. On January 8, 2013, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot and injured in a 2011 shooting in Tucson, launched the gun control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, with a specific aim of matching or exceeding the fundraising capabilities of the NRA and similar groups.

On January 16, 2013, New York became the first U.S. state to act after the shooting when it enacted the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act. On April 3, 2013, the Connecticut General Assembly passed a 139-page major gun-control bill with broad bipartisan support. Governor Malloy signed the bill on the same day. The bill requires universal background checks (background checks for all firearm purchases) and a high-capacity magazine ban banning the sale or purchase of ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition like those used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. It also created the first registry in the United States for dangerous-weapon offenders, and added over 100 types of guns to the state's assault weapons ban. Pro-gun groups had rallied outside the Capitol to protest prior to the signing and challenged it in court. Federal judge Alfred Covello ruled to uphold the law in January 2014.

Legislation introduced in the first session of 113th Congress included the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 and the Manchin-Toomey Amendment to expand background checks on gun purchases. Both were defeated in the Senate on April 17, 2013.

Video games

A renewed debate about the effects of violent video games on young people began soon after the shooting due to news reports suggesting Lanza frequently played violent video games. Wayne LaPierre publicly blamed video games for the shooting, specifically targeting the free online game Kindergarten Killers created by Gary Short.

Police found numerous video games in the basement of Adam Lanza's home, which was used as a gaming area. The final report into the shooting by the State Attorney, published in November 2013, noted that "[Lanza] played video games often, both solo at home and online. They could be described as both violent and non-violent. One person described the shooter as spending the majority of his time playing non-violent video games all day, with his favorite at one point being Super Mario Bros."

The report described his liking for Dance Dance Revolution, which he played frequently for hours with an acquaintance at a movie theater in Danbury which had a commercial version of the game, and also played the game at home. Dance Dance Revolution is a non-violent exercising game where "the user is required to move their feet rhythmically in response to video cues". According to the Report by the Office of the Child Advocate, Lanza would play the game for hours on end using it as a distraction from his inner turmoil. The report said "he would whip himself into a frenzy, a behavior consistent, possibly, with a need to contain anxiety-producing impulses and thoughts. There were days when he would not do anything else but Dance Dance Revolution.

Many organizations were created due to the massacre that work to promote an end to school shootings, with some, such as Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, Sandy Hook Promise, and Safe and Sound Schools organized and led by parents of victims, while others, such as Moms Demand Action, were created by outsiders outraged by the shooting.

Effect on the community

Roses featuring images of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

A few days later, the Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation released results of a survey with over 1,600 respondents. Among other inquiries, the survey asked residents what should be done with the balance of the $11 million US Dollars in donations that had been received since the incident in 2012. The majority of responses said that money for mental health counseling and other family expenses should be the top priorities. A few responses suggested that some of the money should be used to purchase and tear down the shooter's family home in order to replace it with a park or wildlife sanctuary. Jennifer Barahona, the foundation's executive director, was quoted as saying, "That's not something we're considering at this time. It's really outside of our scope."

On October 21, building site preparation work began on the new Sandy Hook Elementary School; project updates and progress were posted on a dedicated website. Citing security and privacy reasons and out of respect for the families of victims, no ground breaking ceremony was held. Construction was scheduled to begin in March 2015 with the school expected to open by December 2016.

In February 2015, the family of one of the victims, Victoria Soto, applied for trademark protection for her name. The reason for this was to help prevent others from misusing Soto's name on social media and for the benefit of the memorial fund set up in her name. The victim's sister, Jillian, said fake social media accounts existed using her sister's name to promote conspiracy theories about the shooting.

2016-present

In July 2016, the new Sandy Hook Elementary School was unveiled and parents were shown around the building. The new school is on the site of the building where the shooting took place, which was demolished and rebuilt with a state grant of around $50 million.

Sandy Hook Memorial in the woods behind Sandy Hook Elementary School

In 2013, the Newtown board of selectmen appointed the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission. Out of 189 design submissions, the commission chose a design created by Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo of SWA Group. $3.7 million to construct the memorial was narrowly approved by Newtown voters in April 2021, and site work began in August 2021. Construction was completed in August 2022. The memorial opened to the public on November 13, 2022, after a private ceremony with the victims' families. It features a stone basin engraved with the names of the victims, with a young sycamore tree at its center. A memorial mass is held every year at St. Rose of Lima Church.

References

External links

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Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting - Wikipedia

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Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting Part of mass shootings in the United States and school shootings in the United States Location Sandy Hook Elementary School, Sandy Hook, Connecticut, U.S. Date December 14, 2012; 10 years ago c. 9:35 - [1] c. 9:40a.m.

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Columbine High School massacre

Part of mass shootings in the United States and school shootings in the United States

Location

Columbine, Colorado, U.S.

Date

April 20, 1999; 24 years ago
11:19a.m. - 12:08p.m. ( MDT)

Target

Students and staff at Columbine High School, first responders

School shooting, mass shooting, mass murder, murder-suicide, arson, attempted bombing, shootout

Weapons

Deaths

15 (including both perpetrators)

Injured

24 (21 by gunfire)

Perpetrators
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

Motive

Inconclusive

Convicted

Mark Manes and Philip Duran (weapons suppliers)

Convictions

Manes and Duran:
Supplying a handgun to a minor, possession of an illegally sawed-off shotgun

Sentence

Manes:
6 years in prison
Duran:
4+ 1⁄2 years in prison[1][2]

Litigation

Multiple lawsuits against the perpetrators' families and suppliers of the weapons[a]

The Columbine High School massacre, commonly referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently committed suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history, until it was surpassed by the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. Columbine still remains the deadliest mass shooting to occur in the U.S. state of Colorado.

Harris and Klebold, who planned for at least a year and hoped to have a large number of victims, intended for the attack to primarily be a bombing and only secondarily a shooting. But when several homemade bombs they planted in the school failed to detonate, the pair launched a shooting attack. Their motive remains inconclusive. The police were slow to enter the school and were heavily criticized for not intervening during the shooting. The incident resulted in the introduction of the immediate action rapid deployment (IARD) tactic, which is used in active-shooter situations, and an increased emphasis on school security with zero-tolerance policies. Debates and moral panic were sparked over American gun culture and gun control laws, high school cliques, subcultures (e.g. goths), outcasts, and school bullying, as well as teenage use of pharmaceutical antidepressants, the internet, and violence in video games and movies.

Many makeshift memorials were created after the massacre, including ones employing victims Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck. Fifteen crosses for the victims and the shooters were erected on top of a hill in Clement Park. The crosses for Harris and Klebold were later removed following controversy. Planning for a permanent memorial began in June 1999, and the resulting Columbine Memorial opened to the public in September 2007.

The shooting has inspired dozens of copycat killings, dubbed the Columbine effect, including many deadlier shootings across the world. The word "Columbine" has become a byword for school shootings.

Perpetrators

Eric Harris

Eric David Harris (April 9, 1981- April 20, 1999) was born in Wichita, Kansas. The Harris family relocated often, as Harris's father was a U.S. Air Force transport pilot. His mother was a homemaker. The family moved from Plattsburgh, New York, to Littleton, Colorado, in July 1993, when his father retired from military service.

The Harris family lived in rented accommodations for their first three years in the Littleton area. During this time, Harris attended Ken Caryl Middle School, where he met Klebold. In 1996, the Harris family purchased a house south of CHS. Harris's older brother attended college at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Dylan Klebold

Dylan Bennet Klebold ( KLEE-bohld; September 11, 1981- April 20, 1999) was born in Lakewood, Colorado. His parents were pacifists and attended a Lutheran church with their children. Both Dylan and his older brother, Byron, attended confirmation classes in accordance with the Lutheran tradition. As had been the case with his older brother, Klebold was named after a renowned poet-in his case, the playwright Dylan Thomas.

At the family home, the Klebolds also observed some rituals in keeping with Klebold's maternal grandfather's Jewish heritage. Klebold attended Normandy Elementary in Littleton, Colorado for first and second grade before transferring to Governor's Ranch Elementary, and became part of the CHIPS ("Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students") program.

Background

Criminal history

In 1996, 15-year-old Eric Harris created a private website on America Online ( AOL). It was initially to host levels (also known as WADs) Harris created for use in the first-person shooter video games , , and . On the site, Harris began a blog, which included details about Harris sneaking out of the house to cause mischief and vandalism, such as lighting fireworks with Klebold and others. These were known as "Rebel Missions", and Harris's blog primarily consisted of "mission logs". Beginning in early 1997, the blog postings began to show the first signs of Harris's anger against society. By the end of the year, the site contained instructions on how to make explosives. Harris's site attracted few visitors and caused no concern until August 1997, after Harris ended a blog post detailing murderous fantasies with "All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can, especially a few people. Like Brooks Brown." Brown was a classmate of his. After Brown's parents viewed the site, they contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office on August 7, 1997. An investigator wrote a draft affidavit to request a search warrant for the Harris household, but it was never submitted to a judge.

On January 30, 1998, Harris and Klebold were arrested for breaking into a white van parked near Littleton and stealing tools and computer equipment. They would subsequently attend a joint court hearing, where they pled guilty to the felony theft. The judge sentenced them to a juvenile diversion program. As a result, both delinquents attended mandatory classes such as anger management and talked with diversion officers. They both were eventually released from diversion several weeks early because of positive actions in the program and put on probation.

Shortly after the court hearing for the van break-in, Harris reverted his website back to just hosting user-created levels of Doom. He began to write his thoughts down in a journal. Klebold had already been keeping a personal journal since March 1997; as early as November of that year, Klebold had mentioned going on a killing spree. Klebold used his journal to vent about his personal problems as well as what he'd wear and use during the attack. In both their journals, Harris and Klebold would later plot the attack. Soon after beginning his journal, Harris typed out one plan of attack which included possibly escaping to a foreign country after the massacre, or hijacking an aircraft at Denver International Airport and crashing it into New York City.

Harris also made entries in his journal on topics related to his sexuality, where he described his desire for sex with women, especially his desire of raping and torturing women in his bedroom. Harris also expressed interest in cannibalism, stating that he would like to dismember a woman with whom he could have "animalistic sex" and eat her flesh.

Harris and Klebold's schoolwork also foreshadowed the massacre. They both displayed themes of violence in their creative writing projects. In December 1997, Harris wrote a paper on school shootings titled "Guns in School", and a poem from the perspective of a bullet. Klebold wrote a short story about a man killing students which worried his teacher so much that she alerted his parents.

Both had also actively researched war and murder. For one project, Harris wrote a paper on Nazi Germany and Klebold wrote a paper on Charles Manson. In a psychology class, Harris wrote he dreamed of going on a shooting spree with Klebold. Harris's journals described several experimental bomb detonations.

Nearly a year before the massacre, Klebold wrote a message in Harris's 1998 yearbook: "killing enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops!! My wrath for January's incident will be godlike. Not to mention our revenge in the commons"; "the commons" was slang for the school cafeteria.

Basement tapes

Harris and Klebold were both enrolled in video-production classes and kept five video tapes that were recorded with school video equipment. Only two of these, " Hitmen for Hire" and "Rampart Range", and part of a third known as " Radioactive Clothing", have been released. The remaining three tapes detailed their plans and reasons for the massacre, including the ways they hid their weapons and deceived their parents. Most were shot in the Harris family basement, and are thus known as the Basement Tapes. Thirty minutes before the attack, they made a final video saying goodbye and apologizing to their friends and families.

In December 1999, before anyone besides investigators had seen them, Time magazine published an article on these tapes. The victims' family members threatened to sue Jefferson County. As a result, select victim families and journalists were allowed to view them, though the tapes were then withheld from the public and, in 2011, destroyed for fear of inspiring future massacres. Transcripts of some of the dialogue and a short clip recorded surreptitiously by a victim's father still exist. The pair claimed they were going to make copies of the tapes to send to news stations but never did so.

When an economics class had Harris make an ad for a business, he and Klebold made a video called Hitmen for Hire on December 8, 1998, which was released in February 2004. It depicts them as part of the Trench Coat Mafia, a clique in the school who wore black trench coats and opposed jocks, extorting money for protecting preps from bullies. Klebold and Harris themselves were apparently not a part of the Trench Coat Mafia but were friends with some of its members. They wore black trench coats on the day of the massacre, and the Hitmen for Hire video seemed a kind of dress rehearsal, showing them walking the halls of the school, and shooting bullies outside with fake guns.

9 mm Hi-Point 995 carbine, one of the guns used by Harris

In the months prior to the attacks, Harris and Klebold acquired two 9mm firearms and two 12-gauge shotguns. Harris had a Hi-Point 995 Carbine with thirteen 10-round magazines and a Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotgun. Klebold used a 9mm Intratec TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun with one 52-, one 32-, and one 28-round magazine and a Stevens 311D double-barreled shotgun. Harris's shotgun was sawed-off to around 26 inches (0.66 m) and Klebold shortened his shotgun's length to 23 inches (0.58 m), a felony under the National Firearms Act.

On November 22, 1998, their friend Robyn Anderson purchased a carbine rifle and the two shotguns for the pair at the Tanner Gun Show, as they were too young to legally purchase the guns themselves. After the attack, she told investigators that she had believed the pair wanted the weapons for target shooting and denied that she had prior knowledge of their plans. Anderson was not charged.

9 mm TEC-9 pistol, one of the guns used by Klebold

Harris and Klebold both held part-time jobs at a local Blackjack Pizza. Through Philip Duran, one of their coworkers, Klebold bought a TEC-9 handgun from Mark Manes for $500 at another gun show on January 23. Manes, Manes' girlfriend, and Duran are all in the Rampart Range video. After the massacre, Manes and Duran were both prosecuted. Each was charged with supplying a handgun to a minor and possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Manes and Duran were sentenced to a total of six years and four-and-a-half years in prison.

Explosives

In addition to the firearms, the complex and highly planned attack involved several improvised explosive devices. Harris and Klebold constructed a total of 99 bombs. These included pipe bombs, carbon-dioxide cartridges filled with gunpowder (called "crickets"), Molotov cocktails, and propane tanks converted to bombs. The propane bombs were used in the cafeteria, the shooters' cars, and in another location intended as a diversion. For ignition, they used storm matches, cannon fuses, and model rocket igniters as well as timing devices built from mechanical alarm clocks for the propane bombs. During the massacre, they carried match strikers taped to their forearms for easy ignition of the pipe bombs and CO ₂ bombs.

Harris also experimented with napalm, and envisioned a kind of backpack and flamethrower. They both attempted to get another friend and coworker, Chris Morris, who was a part of the Trench Coat Mafia, to keep the napalm at his house, but he refused. Harris also tried to recruit him to be a third shooter but played it off as a joke when rebuked.

Harris's website contained instructions on making pipe bombs and Molotovs, and the extensive use of shrapnel. Harris's father once discovered one of his pipe bombs. Harris's journal logged the creation of 25 pipe bombs.

Klebold scared his coworkers by once bringing a pipe bomb into work. They would give various nicknames to their pipe bombs. After the massacre, two pipe bombs had been left in Klebold's bedroom, one named "Vengeance" and another " Atlanta", presumably after the Olympic Park bombing.

Cafeteria bombs

They had in their possession eight propane tanks all converted into bombs. The weekend before the shooting, Harris and Klebold bought two propane tanks and other supplies from a hardware store. They bought six propane tanks on the morning of the attack. Harris was caught on a Texaco gas station security camera at 9:12 a.m. buying a Blue Rhino propane tank. Both cafeteria bombs included a single 20-pound tank, attached pipe bombs, and supporting gasoline canisters alongside.

Harris and Klebold were both equipped with knives, but investigators do not believe they ever utilized them during the massacre. Harris had a boot knife on his belt and a "Khyber-pass" machete bowie knife taped to the back of his ankle. Both had an "R", referencing Harris's alias "REB", etched into the handle, and the machete had a swastika on the sheath. Klebold had a "Cobra" knife mounted to his belt on the left side as well as a switchblade in his right pocket.

The massacre

Planting the bombs

On Tuesday morning, April 20, 1999, Harris and Klebold placed two duffel bags in the cafeteria. Each bag contained propane bombs, set to detonate during the "A" lunch shift, which began at 11:15 a.m.

No witness recalled seeing the duffel bags being added to the 400 or so backpacks that were already in the cafeteria. The security staff at CHS did not observe the bags being placed in the cafeteria; a custodian was replacing the school security videotape at around 11:14 a.m. Shortly after the massacre, police speculated the bombs were placed during this "tape change". They also investigated whether the bombs were placed during the "after-prom" party held the prior weekend. Some internet sleuths claim the bomb placement can be seen on the surveillance video at around 10:58 a.m. Harris and Klebold are seen in the tapes planting the bombs in casual school clothes separately.

Meanwhile, Harris and Klebold armed themselves, using straps and webbing to conceal weapons beneath their trench coats. They lugged bags containing bombs and ammunition. Harris had concealed his shotgun in one of the bags. Beneath the trench coats, Harris wore a military bandolier and a white T-shirt with the inscription " Natural Selection" in black letters, a mantra he had adopted; Klebold wore a black T-shirt with "Wrath" in red letters.

The cafeteria bombs failed to detonate. Had these explosives detonated as intended, they would have killed or severely wounded the 488 students in the cafeteria and damaged the school's structure, collapsing the library into the cafeteria and possibly killing more students and staff.

11:19 a.m.: Shooting begins

At 11:19 a.m., 17-year-old Rachel Scott and her friend Richard Castaldo were having lunch and sitting on the grass next to the west entrance of the school. Klebold threw a pipe bomb towards the parking lot; the bomb only partially detonated, causing it to give off smoke. Castaldo thought it was no more than a crude senior prank. Likewise, several students during the incident first thought that they were watching a prank.

A witness reported hearing "Go! Go!" before Klebold and Harris pulled their guns from beneath their trench coats and began shooting. The two allegedly returned to where Rachel Scott and Richard Castaldo lay on the ground injured. Klebold approached Castaldo, asking if he believed in God. Castaldo truthfully answered no. Harris then turned to Scott, who was crying. He "pulled Rachel's head up by her hair." Here, the situation is disputed. Several students witnessed Harris say something to Rachel, before lifting his gun up to her temple and firing a fatal round. According to Castaldo's initial reports and family members of Scott who claim they have solid proof, "They confronted her with the question, 'Do you believe in God?' and she said yes, and they took a gun to her temple and killed her."Scott was killed instantly when she was hit four times with rounds fired from Harris's carbine; one shot was to the left temple. Castaldo was shot eight times in the chest, arm, and abdomen by both Harris and Klebold; he fell unconscious to the ground and was left paralyzed below the chest.

After firing twice, Klebold's TEC-9 jammed, and he was forced to temporarily cease shooting to fix it, which he did by reloading a new magazine into his pistol. Meanwhile, Harris took off his trenchcoat and aimed his carbine down the west staircase in the direction of three students: Daniel Rohrbough, Sean Graves, and Lance Kirklin. The students presumed they were paintball guns, and were about to walk up the staircase directly below the shooters. Harris fired ten times, killing Rohrbough and injuring Graves and Kirklin. William David Sanders, a teacher and coach at the school, was in the cafeteria when he heard the gunfire and began warning students.

Klebold walked down the steps toward the cafeteria. He first shot once at the body of Dan Rohrbough with his shotgun, and then came up to Lance Kirklin, who was already wounded and lying on the ground, weakly calling for help. Klebold said, "Sure. I'll help you," then shot Kirklin in the jaw with his shotgun. Although near-fatally injured, Kirklin would survive. Graves-paralyzed beneath the waist-had crawled into the doorway of the cafeteria's west entrance and collapsed. He rubbed his blood on his face and played dead. After shooting Kirklin, Klebold walked towards the cafeteria door. He then stepped over the injured Graves to enter the cafeteria. Graves remembers Klebold saying, "Sorry, dude."

Klebold only briefly entered the cafeteria and did not shoot at the several people still inside. Officials speculated that Klebold went to check on the propane bombs. Harris was still on top of the stairs shooting, and severely wounded and partially paralyzed 17-year-old Anne-Marie Hochhalter as she tried to flee. Klebold came out of the cafeteria and went back up the stairs to join Harris. They each shot once at students standing close to a soccer field but did not hit anyone. They walked toward the west entrance, throwing pipe bombs in several directions, including onto the roof; only a few of these pipe bombs detonated. Witnesses heard one of them say, "This is what we always wanted to do. This is awesome!"

Meanwhile, art teacher Patti Nielson was inside the school; she had noticed the commotion and walked toward the west entrance with student Brian Anderson. Nielson had intended to walk outside to tell the two students, "Knock it off", thinking they were either filming a video or pulling a student prank. As Anderson opened the first set of double doors, the gunmen shot out the windows, injuring him with flying glass; Nielson was hit in the shoulder with shrapnel. Anderson and Nielson ran back down the hall into the library, and Nielson alerted the students inside to the danger, telling them to get under desks and keep silent. She dialed 9-1-1 and hid under the library's administrative counter. Anderson fell to the floor, bleeding from his injuries, then hid inside the magazine room adjacent to the library.

11:22 a.m.: Police response and West Entrance shootouts

At 11:22 a.m., a custodian called Deputy Neil Gardner, the assigned resource officer to Columbine, on the school radio, requesting assistance in the senior parking lot. The only paved route took him around the school to the east and south on Pierce Street, where at 11:23 a.m., he heard on his police radio that a female was down, and assumed she had been struck by a car. While exiting his patrol car in the senior lot at 11:24, he heard another call on the school radio, "Neil, there's a shooter in the school."

Harris, at the west entrance, immediately turned and fired ten shots from his carbine at Gardner, who was 60 yards (55 m) away. As Harris reloaded his carbine, Gardner leaned over the top of his car and fired four rounds at Harris from his service pistol. Harris ducked back behind the building, and Gardner momentarily believed that he had hit him. Harris then reemerged and fired at least four more rounds at Gardner (which missed and struck two parked cars), before retreating into the building. No one was hit during the exchange of gunfire. Gardner reported on his police radio, "Shots in the building. I need someone in the south lot with me." By this point, Harris had shot 47 times, and Klebold 5. The shooters then entered the school through the west entrance, moving along the main north hallway, throwing pipe bombs and shooting at anyone they encountered. Klebold shot Stephanie Munson in the ankle, but she was able to walk out of the school. The pair then shot out the windows to the east entrance of the school. After proceeding through the hall several times and shooting toward-and missing-any students they saw, they went toward the west entrance and turned into the library hallway.

Inside the school cafeteria, Dave Sanders and two custodians, Jon Curtis and Jay Gallatine, initially told students to get under the tables, then successfully evacuated students up the staircase leading to the second floor of the school. The stairs were located around the corner from the library hallway in the main south hallway. Sanders then tried to secure as much of the school as he could. Sanders and another student were down at the end of the hallway, where he gestured for students in the library to stay, before encountering Harris and Klebold, who were approaching from the corner of the north hallway. Sanders and the student turned and ran in the opposite direction. Harris and Klebold shot at them both, with Harris hitting Sanders twice in the back and neck, hitting his teeth on exit, but missing the student. The latter ran into a science classroom and warned everyone to hide. Klebold walked over towards Sanders, who had collapsed, and tossed a pipe bomb, then returned to Harris up the library hallway.

Sanders struggled toward the science area, and a teacher took him into a classroom where 30 students were located. Due to his knowledge of first aid, student Aaron Hancey was brought to the classroom from another by teachers despite the unfolding commotion. With the assistance of fellow student Kevin Starkey and teacher Theresa Miller, Hancey administered first aid to Sanders for three hours, attempting to stem the blood loss using shirts from students in the room, and showing him pictures from his wallet to keep him talking. Using a phone in the room, Miller and several students maintained contact with police outside the school.

1. Rachel Scott (aged 17), killed on grass outside west entrance by Harris

2. Daniel Rohrbough (aged 15), killed at bottom of stairs leading to west entrance by Harris

3. William David Sanders (aged 47), shot in hallway adjacent library by Harris; died of blood loss in a science classroom

4. Kyle Velasquez (aged 16), killed while sitting in a chair near the middle of the north computer table in the library by Klebold

5. Steven Curnow (aged 14), killed at the west end of the south computer table in the library by Harris

6. Cassie Bernall (aged 17), killed under library table No. 19 by Harris

7. Isaiah Shoels (aged 18), killed under library table No. 16 by Harris

8. Matthew Kechter (aged 16), killed under library table No. 16 by Klebold

9. Lauren Townsend (aged 18), killed under library table No. 2 by Klebold

10. John Tomlin (aged 16), killed next to library table No. 6 by Klebold; after being wounded by Harris

11. Kelly Fleming (aged 16), killed next to library table No. 2 by Harris

12. Daniel Mauser (aged 15), killed under library table No. 9 by Harris

13. Corey DePooter (aged 17), killed under library table No. 14 by Klebold

14. Eric Harris (perpetrator) (aged 18), committed suicide via a self-inflicted gunshot wound

15. Dylan Klebold (perpetrator) (aged 17), committed suicide via a self-inflicted gunshot wound

11:29-11:36 a.m.: Library massacre

At 11:29 a.m., Harris and Klebold entered the library. Fifty-two students, two teachers and two librarians were inside. Harris yelled at everyone to "GET UP!" loud enough to be heard on the 911 call. When no one complied, Harris yelled, "Fine! I'll start shooting anyway!"

Harris fired his shotgun twice at a desk. Student Evan Todd had been standing near a pillar when the shooters entered the library and had just taken cover behind a photocopier. Todd was hit by wood splinters in the eye and lower back but was not seriously injured. He then hid behind the administrative counter.

Throughout the massacre in the library, they ordered everybody to get up, said how long they had been waiting for this, and seemed to be enjoying themselves, shouting things like "Woo!" after shooting. While ordering the jocks to stand up, one of the two said, "Anybody with a white hat or a sports emblem on it is dead." Wearing a white baseball cap at Columbine was a tradition among sports team members. Nobody stood up, and several students tried to hide their white hats.

Harris then walked to a table south of the lower computer table, with two students underneath: Cassie Bernall and Emily Wyant. Harris slapped the surface of the table twice as he knelt, and said " Peek-a-boo" before shooting Bernall once in the head with the shotgun, killing her. Harris at this point held the gun with one hand, and the weapon hit his face in recoil, injuring his nose. He told Klebold he had done so, and Klebold responded "Why'd you do that?"

Klebold noticed Ireland trying to provide aid to Hall, who had suffered a wound to his knee. As Ireland tried to help Hall, his head rose above the table. Klebold shot him a second time, hitting him twice in the head and once in the foot. Ireland was knocked unconscious but survived. Klebold then walked toward another table, where he discovered 18-year-old Isaiah Shoels, 16-year-old Matthew Kechter, and 16-year-old Craig Scott (Rachel's younger brother), hiding underneath. Klebold called out to Harris that he found a " nigger" and tried to pull Shoels out from under the table.

Klebold walked to the east area of the library. Harris walked from the bookcase, past the central area to meet Klebold. The latter shot at a display case next to the door, then turned and shot toward the closest table, hitting and injuring 17-year-old Mark Kintgen in the head and shoulder. He then turned toward the table to his left and fired, injuring 18-year-olds Lisa Kreutz, Lauren Townsend, and Valeen Schnurr with the same shotgun blast. Klebold then moved toward the same table and fired several shots with the TEC-9, killing Townsend.

An FBI diagram of the library, with locations of fatalities

After Savage left, Harris turned and fired his carbine at the table directly north of where he had been, hitting the ear and hand of 15-year-old Daniel Mauser. Mauser retaliated by either shoving a chair at Harris or grabbing at his leg; Harris fired again and hit Mauser in the center of the face at close range, killing him. Harris then moved south and fired three shots under another table, critically injuring two 17-year-olds, Jennifer Doyle and Austin Eubanks. Klebold then shot once, fatally wounding 17-year-old Corey DePooter, at 11:35. There were no further victims. They had killed 10 people in the library and wounded 12.

12:08 p.m.: Suicides

After leaving the library, Harris and Klebold entered the science area, where they caused a fire in an empty storage closet. It was extinguished by a teacher who had hidden in an adjacent room. The gunmen then proceeded toward the south hallway, where they shot into an empty science room. At 11:44 a.m., they were captured on the school security cameras as they re-entered the cafeteria. The recording shows Harris crouching against the rail on the staircase and firing toward the propane bombs left in the cafeteria, in an unsuccessful attempt to detonate them. As Klebold approached the propane bomb and examined it, Harris took a drink from one of the cups left behind. Klebold lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it at the propane bomb. About a minute later, the gallon of fuel attached to the bomb ignited, causing a fire that was extinguished by the fire sprinklers a few minutes later. They left the cafeteria at 11:46.

They re-entered the library, which was empty of survivors except for the unconscious Ireland and the injured Kreutz. Once inside, at 12:02 p.m., police were shot at again through the library windows and returned fire. Nobody was injured in the exchange. By 12:05, all gunfire from the school had ceased. By 12:08 p.m., both gunmen had killed themselves. Harris sat down with his back to a bookshelf and fired his shotgun through the roof of his mouth; Klebold went down on his knees and shot himself in the left temple with his TEC-9. An article by The Rocky Mountain News stated that Patti Nielson overheard them shout "One! Two! Three!" in unison, just before a loud boom. Nielson later said that she had never spoken with either of the writers of the article.

In 2002, the National Enquirer published two post-mortem photos of Harris and Klebold in the library. Klebold's gun was underneath his body and so unseen in the photo, leading to speculation that Harris shot Klebold before killing himself. However, some of Klebold's blood was on Harris's legs. Also, just before shooting himself, Klebold lit a Molotov cocktail on a nearby table, underneath which Patrick Ireland was lying, which caused the tabletop to momentarily catch fire. Underneath the scorched film of material was a piece of Harris's brain matter, suggesting Harris had shot himself by this point.

Crisis ends

SWAT response

A survivor recalls the events of the day

Leawood Elementary

Meanwhile, families of students and staff were asked to gather at nearby Leawood Elementary School to await information. All students, teachers, and school employees were taken away, questioned, and offered medical care in small holding areas before being bussed to meet with their family members at Leawood Elementary. Some of the victims' families were told to wait on one final school bus that never came.[further explanation needed ]

The boy in the window

"1 bleeding to death"

At 2:15 p.m., students placed a sign in the window: "1 bleeding to death", in order to alert police and medical personnel of Dave Sanders' location in the science room. Police initially feared it was a ruse by the shooters. A shirt was also tied to the doorknob. At 2:30, this was spotted, and by 2:40, SWAT officers evacuated the room of students and called for a paramedic. Hancey and Starkey were reluctant to leave Sanders behind. By 3:00, the SWAT officers had moved Sanders to a storage room, which was more easily accessible. As they did so, a paramedic arrived and found Sanders had no pulse. He had died of his injuries in the storage room before he could receive medical care. He was the only teacher to die in the shooting.

Suicide mission; estimated 25 dead

Lisa Kreutz, shot in the shoulder, arms, hand, and thigh, remained lying in the library. She had tried to move but became light-headed. Kreutz kept track of time by the sound of the school's bells until police arrived.[citation needed ] Kreutz was finally evacuated at 3:22 p.m., along with Patti Nielson, Brian Anderson, and the three library staff who had hidden in the rooms adjacent to the library. Officials found the bodies in the library by 3:30.

President Bill Clinton's remarks regarding the shooting on April 20, 1999

By 4:00, Sheriff John P. Stone made an initial estimate of 25 dead students and teachers, fifty wounded, and referred to the massacre as a "suicide mission". President Bill Clinton later issued a statement.

Bomb squad response

Stone said that police officers were searching the bodies of the gunmen. They feared they had used their pipe bombs to booby-trap corpses, including their own. At 4:30 p.m., the school was declared safe. At 5:30, additional officers were called in, as more explosives were found in the parking lot and on the roof. By 6:15, officials had found a bomb in Klebold's car in the parking lot, set to detonate the gas tank. Stone then marked the entire school as a crime scene.[citation needed ]

At 10:40 p.m., a member of the bomb squad, who was attempting to dispose of an un-detonated pipe bomb, accidentally lit a striking match attached to the bomb by brushing it against the wall of the ordnance disposal trailer. The bomb detonated inside the trailer but no one was injured.

The bomb squad disarmed the car bomb. Klebold's car was repaired and, in 2006, put up for auction.

Immediate aftermath

Clinton's remarks to the Columbine High School community on May 20, 1999

At 10:00 a.m., the bomb squad declared the building safe for officials to enter. By 11:30 a.m., a spokesman of the sheriff declared the investigation underway. Thirteen of the bodies were still inside the high school as investigators photographed the building.

At 2:30 p.m., a press conference was held by Jefferson County District Attorney David Thomas and Sheriff John Stone, at which they said that they suspected others had helped plan the shooting. Formal identification of the dead had not yet taken place, but families of the children thought to have been killed had been notified.

Throughout the late afternoon and early evening, the bodies were gradually removed from the school and taken to the Jefferson County Coroner's Office to be identified and autopsied. By 5:00 p.m., the names of many of the dead were known. An official statement was released, naming the 15 confirmed deaths and 27 injuries related to the massacre.

On April 22, the cafeteria bombs were discovered.

In the days following the shootings, Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck became memorials, and impromptu memorials were held in Clement Park. On April 30, carpenter Greg Zanis erected fifteen 6-foot-tall wooden crosses to honor those who had died at the school. Daniel Rohrbough's father cut down the two meant for the gunmen. There were also fifteen trees planted, and he cut down two of those as well.

In November 2021, a report was leaked to NPR about that year's National Rifle Association convention in Denver. In a series of audio tapes, Wayne LaPierre and other top officials suggested raising one million dollars for the victims' families, and the cancellation of the convention was considered by some within the organization.

Search warrant press conference

Also on April 30, high-ranking officials of Jefferson County and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office met to decide if they should reveal that Michael Guerra had drafted an affidavit for a search warrant of Harris's residence more than a year before the shootings, based on his previous investigation of Harris's website and activities. Since the affidavit's contents lacked the necessary probable cause, they decided not to disclose this information at a press conference held on April 30, nor did they mention it in any other way.

Over the next two years, Guerra's original draft and investigative file documents were lost. In September 1999, a Jefferson County investigator failed to find the documents during a secret search of the county's computer system. A second attempt in late 2000 found copies of the document within the Jefferson County archives. Their loss was termed "troubling" by a grand jury convened after the file's existence was reported in April 2001. It was concealed by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and not revealed until September 2001, resulting from an investigation by the TV show . The documents were reconstructed and released to the public, but the original documents are still missing. The final grand jury investigation was released in September 2004.

Christian martyrdom

In the wake of the shooting, victims Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall came to be regarded as Christian martyrs by Evangelical Christians. Christian churches used the martyr narrative of Scott's and Bernall's deaths to promote themselves and recruit members.

We are Columbine

Secondary casualties

Six months after the shootings, Anne Marie Hochhalter's mother killed herself. Several former students and teachers had PTSD. Greg Barnes, a 17-year-old student who had witnessed Sanders' shooting, committed suicide in May 2000. Survivor Austin Eubanks, who was injured during the shooting, became heavily medicated, developing an opioid addiction. Eventually overcoming and later speaking publicly about the addiction, Eubanks died from an accidental overdose in 2019 at the age of 37.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation

In the immediate aftermath, conspiracy theories and unfounded claims were made by several anti-government movements and extremist religious and political movements, such as the Westboro Baptist Church and televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr.

Westboro's founder and then-leader, Fred Phelps, unfoundedly claimed that both Harris and Klebold were gay, saying: "Two filthy fags slaughtered 13 people at Columbine High." Falwell also claimed that Harris and Klebold were gay, though he retracted afterward.

Other antisemitic conspiracy theories pointed to the massacre being a Jewish conspiracy, due to Klebold's mother being Jewish.

The shooting was planned as a terrorist attack that would cause "the most deaths in U.S. history", but the motive has never been ascertained with any degree of certainty. In a letter provided with the May 15 report on the Columbine attack, Sheriff John Stone and Undersheriff John A. Dunaway wrote they "cannot answer the most fundamental question-why?" In the days following the event, media speculation regarding the killers' motive was rife. Media reports were disseminated suggesting various motives of the killers, although all theories were largely unsubstantiated and turned out to be myths. These reports included blaming bullying, goth culture, video games, Marilyn Manson, and targeting jocks and minorities. Other rumors were spread in the local area but not largely disseminated by the media, such as the false claim spread by some students that the killers were bullied because they were homosexual.

Mental disorder

FBI's theory

The FBI concluded that the killers had mental illnesses, that Harris was a clinical psychopath, and Klebold had depression. Dwayne Fuselier, the supervisor in charge of the Columbine investigation, would later remark: "I believe Eric went to the school to kill and didn't care if he died, while Dylan wanted to die and didn't care if others died as well."

In April 1998, a year prior to the shooting, as part of his diversion program, Harris wrote a letter of apology to the owner of the van he and Klebold broke into earlier that year. Around the same time, he derided the owner of the van in his journal, stating that he believed he had the right to steal something if he wanted to. By far the most prevalent theme in Klebold's journals is his wish for suicide and private despair at his lack of success with women, which he refers to as an "infinite sadness". Klebold had repeatedly documented his desires to kill himself, and his final remark in the Basement Tapes, shortly before the attack, is a resigned statement made as he glances away from the camera: "Just know I'm going to a better place. I didn't like life too much."

The FBI's theory was used by Dave Cullen for his 2009 book . Harris was depicted as the mastermind, having a messianic-level superiority complex and hoping to demonstrate his superiority to the world. Klebold was a follower who primarily participated in the massacre as a means to simply end his life.

This theory has been met with criticism. Critics cite the fact that Klebold, not Harris, was the first to mention a killing spree in his journal. They also cite evidence that Harris was depressed as well, such as his prescription for antidepressants mentioned below.

Other theories

There have been other attempts to diagnose Harris and Klebold with mental illness. Peter Langman believes Harris was a psychopath and Klebold was schizotypal. Professor Aubrey Immelman published a personality profile of Harris, based on journal entries and personal communication, and believes the materials suggested behavior patterns consistent with a " malignant narcissism... pathological narcissistic personality disorder with borderline and antisocial features, along with some paranoid traits, and unconstrained aggression."

Medication

Opponents of contemporary psychiatry like Peter Breggin claim that the psychiatric medications prescribed to Harris may have exacerbated his aggressiveness. Harris had complained of depression, anger, and suicidal thoughts, for which he was prescribed antidepressants. Toxicology reports confirmed that Harris had Luvox in his bloodstream at the time of the shootings, whereas Klebold had no medications in his system. Harris continued his scheduled meetings with his psychologist until a few months before the massacre.

Media speculation

Accounts from various parents and school staffers reported bullying in the school. Reportedly, Harris and Klebold were regularly called " faggots". Klebold said on the Basement Tapes, "You've been giving us shit for years. However, they also stated that nobody is to blame and nobody could've prevented the attack on the tapes. Dylan when talking to his father about the jocks had stated, "They sure give Eric hell." but he also said that the jocks tended to leave him [Dylan] alone. Brown also noted Harris was born with mild chest indent. This made him reluctant to take his shirt off in gym class, and other students would laugh at him. Nathan Vanderau, a friend of Klebold, and Alisa Owen, who knew Harris, noted they were picked on. Vanderau recalled that a "cup of fecal matter" was thrown at them.

It has been alleged that Harris and Klebold were once both confronted by a group of students at CHS who sprayed them with ketchup while referring to them as "faggots" and " queers". Klebold told his mother it had been the worst day of his life. According to Brown, "That happened while teachers watched. They couldn't fight back. They wore the ketchup all day and went home covered with it." According to classmate Chad Laughlin, it involved seniors pelting Klebold with "ketchup-covered tampons" in the commons. Laughlin also stated "A lot of the tension in the school came from the class above us...There were people fearful of walking by a table where you knew you didn't belong, stuff like that. Certain groups certainly got preferential treatment across the board."

A similar theory was expounded by Brooks Brown in his book on the massacre, No Easy Answers; he noted that teachers commonly ignored bullying and that when Harris and Klebold were bullied by the jocks at CHS, they would make statements such as: "Don't worry, man. It happens all the time!"

Cullen and others dispute the theory of "revenge for bullying" as a motivation. While acknowledging the pervasiveness of bullying in high schools including CHS, Cullen claimed they were not victims of bullying. He noted Harris was more often the perpetrator than victim of bullying. In a fact check published on April 19, 2019, on the eve of the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the massacre, Gillian Brockell in The Washington Post underscored that, contrary to the popular view, their attack was not revenge for being bullied. Author Jeff Kass who has published a book on the attack believes that bullying wasn't the cause. Peter Langman also argues against bullying being the cause of the attack. Other researchers have also argued against the bullying hypothesis.

Rejection was also highlighted as a cause. Social cliques within high schools such as the Trench Coat Mafia were widely discussed. One perception formed was that Harris and Klebold were both outcasts who had been isolated from their classmates, prompting feelings of helplessness, insecurity, and depression, as well as a strong need for power and attention. Harris's last journal entry reads, "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things", while Klebold wrote "The lonely man strikes with absolute rage." In an interview, Brown described them as the school's worst outcasts, "the losers of the losers".

This concept too has been questioned, as both Harris and Klebold had a close circle of friends and a wider informal social group. Cullen and Brockell both also say they were not in the Trench Coat Mafia and were not isolated outcasts or loners. Peter Langman concurs by also arguing against the pair being loners and outcasts.

Political terrorism

Sociologist Ralph Larkin has theorized that the massacre was to trigger a revolution of outcast students and the dispossessed: "[A]s an overtly political act in the name of oppressed students victimized by their peers. [...] The Columbine shootings redefined such acts not merely as revenge but as a means of protest of bullying, intimidation, social isolation, and public rituals of humiliation."

In contrast with the theory that attack was political, one author argues Columbine was only increasingly linked to terrorism after the September 11 attacks.

Marilyn Manson

In the late 1990s, Marilyn Manson and his eponymous band established themselves as a household name, and as one of the most controversial rock acts in music history. Their two album releases prior to the massacre were both critical and commercial successes, and by the time of their Rock Is Dead Tour in 1999, the frontman had become a culture war iconoclast and a rallying icon for alienated youth.

Immediately after the massacre, a significant portion of blame was directed at the band and, specifically, at its outspoken frontman. In the weeks following the shootings, media reports about Harris and Klebold portrayed them and the Trench Coat Mafia as part of a gothic cult. Early media reports alleged that the shooters were fans, and were wearing the group's T-shirts during the massacre. Although these claims were later proven to be false, news outlets continued to run sensationalist stories with headlines such as "Killers Worshipped Rock Freak Manson" and "Devil-Worshipping Maniac Told Kids To Kill". Speculation in national media and among the public led many to believe that Manson's music and imagery were the shooter's sole motivation, despite reports that revealed that the two were not big fans.

Despite this, Marilyn Manson were widely criticized by religious, political, and entertainment-industry figures. Under mounting pressure in the days after Columbine, the group postponed their last five North American tour dates out of respect for the victims and their families. Manson published his response to these accusations in an op-ed piece for Rolling Stone, titled "Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?", in which he castigated America's gun culture, the political influence of the National Rifle Association, and the media's irresponsible coverage, which he said facilitated the placing of blame on a scapegoat. After concluding the European and Japanese legs of their tour on August 8, the band withdrew from public view to work on their next album, 2000'sHoly Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) as an artistic rebuttal to the allegations leveled against them.

Video games

They are able to hook into the Internet and play video games that are extraordinarily violent, that cause the blood pressure to rise and the adrenaline level to go up, games that cause people to be killed and the players to die themselves. It is a very intense experience. They are able to get into Internet chat rooms and, if there are no nuts or people of the same mentality in their hometown, hook up with people around the country. They are able to rent from the video store-not just go down and see Natural Born Killers or The Basketball Diaries-but they are able to bring it home and watch it repeatedly. In this case, even maybe make their own violent film. Many have said this murder was very much akin to The Basketball Diaries, in which a student goes in and shoots others in the classroom. I have seen a video of that, and many others may have.

-Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Youth Violence, Senator Jeff Sessions, testifying before the Senate on the Columbine tragedy, 1999.

Violent video games were also blamed. Parents of some of the victims filed several unsuccessful lawsuits against video game manufacturers. Jerald Block believes their immersion in a virtual world best explains the massacre. While Brooks Brown disagrees that video games caused the massacre, he agrees elements of their plan came from video games.

Harris and Klebold were both fans of shooter video games such as Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and . A file on Harris's computer read the massacre will "be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together." In his last journal entry, Harris wished to "Get a few extra frags on the scoreboard." After the massacre, it was alleged Harris created Doom and Duke Nukem 3D levels resembling CHS, but these were never found.

They were avid fans of Doom especially. Harris said of the massacre, "It's going to be like... Doom." He also wrote "I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy...so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster from Doom." In Harris's yearbook, Klebold wrote "I find a similarity between people and Doom zombies."[citation needed ] Harris named his shotgun Arlene after a character in the Doom novels. The TEC-9 Klebold used resembled an AB-10, a weapon from the Doom novels that Harris referenced several times.

Harris spent a great deal of time creating a large WAD, named Tier (German for 'animal', and a song by Rammstein), calling it his "life's work".[better source needed ] The WAD was uploaded to the Columbine school computer and to AOL shortly before the attack, but appears to have been lost.

The other game mentioned specifically by Harris for what the massacre would be like was Duke Nukem 3D. The game has pipe bombs and one of the enemies is the "pig cop". Brooks Brown wrote that pipe bombs were set in the halls of the school with the intention of causing a chain reaction, because that's what happens in Duke Nukem 3D. Brown also wrote they shot wildly because it works in Duke Nukem 3D.

Following the Columbine shooting, schools across the United States instituted new security measures such as see-through backpacks, metal detectors, school uniforms, and security guards. Some schools implemented the numbering of school doors in order to improve public safety response. Several schools throughout the country resorted to requiring students to wear computer-generated IDs.

Schools also adopted a zero tolerance approach to possession of weapons and threatening behavior by students. Despite the effort, several social science experts feel the zero tolerance approach adopted in schools has been implemented too harshly, with unintended consequences creating other problems. Despite the safety measures that were implemented in the wake of the tragedy at Columbine, school shootings continued to take place in the United States, including at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Stoneman Douglas High School, and Robb Elementary School.

Some schools renewed existing anti-bullying policies. Rachel's Challenge was started by Rachel Scott's parents, and lectures schools about bullying and suicide.

Police tactics

Parents of some of the victims filed several unsuccessful lawsuits against film companies, over films such as The Basketball Diaries, which includes a dream sequence with a student shooting his classmates in a trench coat. In the Basement Tapes, they debate on whether or not Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino are appropriate choices to direct films about the massacre. Their home videos also show inspiration taken from Pulp Fiction. Both were fans of the film Lost Highway. Apocalypse Now was found in Harris's VCR.

Many impromptu memorials were created after the massacre, including victims Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck.

Soon after the massacre, music students at CU Boulder raised money to commission a piece of music to honor Columbine. The university band turned to Frank Ticheli, who responded by composing the wind ensemble work An American Elegy. The following year, the Columbine band premiered the piece at CU Boulder's concert hall. As of 2019, Ticheli's sheet music publisher estimates An American Elegy has been performed 10,000 times.

Gun control

The shooting resulted in calls for more gun control measures. The gun show loophole and background checks became a focus of a national debate. It was the deadliest mass shooting during the era of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Victim Daniel Mauser's father Tom Mauser has become a gun control advocate.

In 2000, federal and state legislation was introduced that would require safety locks on firearms as well as ban the importation of high-capacity ammunition magazines. Though laws were passed that made it a crime to buy guns for criminals and minors, there was considerable controversy over legislation pertaining to background checks at gun shows. There was concern in the gun lobby over restrictions on Second Amendment rights in the United States. Frank Lautenberg introduced a proposal to close the gun show loophole in federal law. It was passed in the Senate, but did not pass in the House.

Michael Moore's 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine focused heavily on the American obsession with handguns, its grip on Jefferson County, and its role in the shooting.

Popular culture

"Columbine" has since become a euphemism for a school shooting, rather like " going postal" is for workplace violence.

Since the advent of social media, a fandom for shooters Harris and Klebold has had a documented presence on social media sites, especially Tumblr. Fans of Harris and Klebold refer to themselves as "Columbiners". An article published in 2015 in the Journal of Transformative Works, a scholarly journal which focuses on the sociology of fandoms, noted that Columbiners were not fundamentally functionally different from more mainstream fandoms. Columbiners create fan art and fan fiction, even cosplaying the pair, and have a scholarly interest in the shooting.

A number of books, movies and other media have been inspired by this event. Among those are several video games. A video game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was based on the massacre. The Flash game Pico's School was also inspired by it.

The Columbine shootings influenced subsequent school shootings, with several such plots mentioning it. Fear of copycats has sometimes led to the closing of entire school districts. Since Columbine, over 74 copycat cases have been reported, 21 of which resulted in attacks, while the rest were thwarted by law enforcement. In many of them, the perpetrators cited Harris and Klebold as heroes or martyrs.

Harris and Klebold have become what the Napa Valley Register have called " cultural icons" for troubled youth. According to psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a legacy of the Columbine shootings is its "allure to disaffected youth".

Sociologist Ralph Larkin examined twelve major school shootings in the US in the following eight years and found that in eight of those, "the shooters made explicit reference to Harris and Klebold". Larkin wrote that the Columbine massacre established a " script" for shootings. "Numerous post-Columbine rampage shooters referred directly to Columbine as their inspiration; others attempted to supersede the Columbine shootings in body count."

A 2015 investigation by CNN identified "more than 40 people...charged with Columbine-style plots". A 2014 investigation by ABC News identified "at least 17 attacks and another 36 alleged plots or serious threats against schools since the assault on Columbine High School that can be tied to the 1999 massacre." Ties identified by ABC News included online research by the perpetrators into the Columbine shooting, clipping news coverage and images of Columbine, explicit statements of admiration of Harris and Klebold, such as writings in journals and on social media, in video posts, and in police interviews, timing planned to an anniversary of Columbine, plans to exceed the Columbine victim counts, and other ties.

In 2015, journalist Malcolm Gladwell writing in The New Yorker magazine proposed a threshold model of school shootings in which Harris and Klebold were the triggering actors in "a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant's action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before."

In February 2016, after Klebold's mother, Sue Klebold, surfaced to speak out on mental health and suicide prevention, she was condemned by then Attorney General of Colorado, Cynthia Coffman, who tweeted that Klebold had been "irresponsible and inflammatory" for her interview with Diane Sawyer. She also added on a follow-up tweet that Klebold had been "selfish" and that her interview could have "very negative consequences". Coffman's remarks were condemned by Ted Zocco-Hochhalter, father of a student paralyzed in the attack, who said there was nothing wrong with Klebold coming up as a remorseful mother trying to spark awareness on mental issues. Other mental health organizations echoed Zocco-Hochhalter's remarks.

References

Bibliography

Cited works

Further reading

Primary sources

"The Columbine Report". Salon.com. May 16, 2000. Archived from the original on May 1, 2001. "CD". CNN and Jeffco Sheriff's Office.

"Columbine Report documents, the "11k"". Jeffco Sheriff's Office.

Eric Harris's journal called "The Book of God", Archived September 4, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, acolumbinesite.com. Another transcription

Dylan Klebold's journal called "The Book of Existences", Another transcription, includes yearbook

"The Basement Tapes". Acolumbinesite.com. Archived from the original on November 25, 2010.

External links

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Columbine High School massacre - Wikipedia

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Columbine High School massacre Part of mass shootings in the United States and school shootings in the United States Location Columbine, Colorado, U.S. Date April 20, 1999; 24 years ago 11:19a.m. - 12:08p.m.

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COLUMBINE SHOOTERS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUSJ6rqEWUY

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXlnrFpCu0c

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeQ4HWhPEdA

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3JMSTPSsbU

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TgnmlGtx_A

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CM0cc--lj_F/?igshid=3isi638plzwq

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WRITE A SPEECH IN FAVOR OF GUN CONTROL

introduce yourself

explain the severity of the issue

ask for change

200 WORDS

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https://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/relative-clauses-exercise-1.html

https://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/pronouns/relative_pronouns.htm

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