Columbine

My reading standard is 11.R.5.1. I have summarized this on a different document. I got tired of doing the Fearbook, so I decided to move on to school shootings. I chose this topic because bullying has been an effect on school shootings. I did the first one that came into my head, and that was the Columbine Massacre. Columbine is located in a suburban town called Littleton in Colorado.

Dylan Kelbold and Eric Harris seem to be like normal students at Columbine. They became best friends and they were both really intelligent with technology especially with computers. From their acquaintances, they were being picked on by jocks because Dylan or Eric weren’t able to fit in a clique. It seem like the boys were going through depression due to the bullying from their peers. Eric kept a journal and he wrote how much he hated life or other subjects in his life and why.

They wanted to prepare for the massacre. They wanted it to occur on April 20^th, which they knew was Adolf Hitler’s birthday. They research on how to build bombs and they also went to the shooting range to get a little “practice” with their shooting skills. They wanted to enter the cafeteria where 500 students will be for the first lunch period. On April 20^th, 1999 at 11:15, the boys set duffel bags full of explosives near a cafeteria table. No one notice the bags or they thought that it was nothing. The boys waited outside for their explosives to go off, but the bombs malfunctioned. They set up two more explosives several blocks away and once when those explosives went off, they began firing at students outside the cafeteria. At 11:19 the Columbine Massacre happened.

Students inside the school thought that it was a senior prank. No one started to panic until Eric and Dylan shot at least 4 students. Teachers put students in rooms and lock the door and hid. Numerous of students were trapped in the library where Eric and Dylan did most of their shooting. As they were walking through the school, they just threw pipe bombs and just kept shooting. After killing thirteen innocent people, twelve students and one teacher, Eric and Dylan committed suicide somewhere between 12:02 to 12:05 in the library. Columbine Massacre went on for 47 devastating minutes even with the entire world watching this.

10 years later: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-13-columbine-myths_N.htm

Here is the link to read more on USA today.

In USA Today article, the police say that Eric and Dylan didn’t start the shooting due to the bullying that they had. They just wanted to pick on the freshmen and “fags”. The boys didn’t target the jocks, blacks, or Christians. Both of them were on antidepressants and that seem to play a major concept in the investigation. They weren’t normal kids; they just had severe psychological problems.