Columbine High School Massacre

On the noon of April 20th, 1999 America’s deadliest school shooting had just ended with the suicide of its two gunmen. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had just murdered twelve students, one teacher, and injured twenty-one since they began their shooting spree forty minutes earlier in the city of Littleton, Colorado. The media coverage of the Columbine High School massacre made this event have a tremendous impact on the people of the United States, inducing fear of all outcasts in schools, and creating an insatiable thirst for answers. Soon, there was a large amount of misinformation, but it took years before people knew why it happened. The events leading to the Columbine High School massacre have become important clues to look for in order to
Eric not only had threatening messages to Brooks Brown, but also instructions on making explosives, and death threats to other students (Kohn “Columbine”). The sheriff’s deputies indeed worked on warning Columbine High School, but school faculty chose not to look further into the issue; as they believed there was nothing to do. The school district official at the time, Sally Blanchard, admits that the reason why the school did nothing about this warning was because it was purely informational, and they did not want to interfere with the deputies’ investigation (Kohn “Columbine”). However, five months later, in August of that same year, the school’s security wrote a plan in case they heard of a threat or any acts of violence from a student (Kohn “Columbine”). Yet, in a documentary from Discovery Channel being streamed on YouTube by the name of Zero Hour, it is stated that the first officer on the scene (at 11:24 A.M.) was Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputy Neil Garner who was shot at by Eric as soon as he left his car (ViralVideoArchiver). Six minutes later, he would be providing covering fire with other deputies to protect any students leaving the building, as the gunmen approached the windows to shoot at the police and medical personnel. The deputies did their job and contacted SWAT for them to enter the building, but they have been highly criticized for their job there. Half of an hour had passed before the SWAT Teams arrived at the scene after they were contacted, and it took them an hour before they actually entered the building at 1:00 P.M.; an hour after the gunmen committed suicide (A Columbine Site “The SWAT”). The SWAT took too long to take any action, and this led to the death of one of the faculty members, Dave Sanders, and possibly more lives. While