‘They Could Have Been Stopped’

A staggering array of weapons, remnants of America’s deadliest school shooting, were laid bare Thursday for the public to see. Hundreds of bullets, bloody scraps of carpet and sawed-off shotguns sat beneath harsh fluorescent lights at the county fairgrounds.

The Jefferson County sheriff’s office’s unusual decision to display all the physical evidence in the Columbine massacre case was meant to quell lingering doubts about the investigation. But it ignited more.

In a tense two-hour news conference, Colorado Atty. Gen. Ken Salazar said authorities should have searched the home of one of the killers before the attack, based on earlier complaints. “In retrospect, there should have been a search warrant at Eric Harris’ home,” he said.

Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, walked into Columbine High School in Littleton on April 20, 1999, bristling with guns and pipe bombs. In the ensuing rampage, they killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.

According to Salazar, Harris had 15 run-ins with sheriff’s deputies before the attack. Some incidents were minor, such as throwing snowballs.

In other incidents, he was caught breaking into a van and making death threats against a neighbor. The threats only recently surfaced in a notebook at the sheriff’s office.

“It went into a file and nothing ever happened,” Salazar said. “There are judgments made on what to move forward on. There was no cover-up.”

Still, Salazar said former Sheriff John Stone had not been as forthcoming with information about Columbine as had the newly elected sheriff, Ted Mink.

“There has been a sea change of cooperation,” Salazar said.

One of Mink’s pledges was to release all the Columbine evidence. On Wednesday, relatives of the victims were allowed to see the evidence; on Thursday, it was opened to the media and the public.

“There is no precedent for this kind of evidence viewing,” Salazar said. “We are breaking with standard procedure to do what we think is right.”

Some evidence is still the subject of legal battles and has not been released. Many parents and relatives of the victims seemed disturbed by the magnitude of what was laid out in the two cavernous rooms at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.

“It’s hard to see the gun that killed your child,” said Dawn Anna, whose daughter Lauren Townsend was shot in the school library, where most of the killings occurred. “She was always in the library; she was the class valedictorian.”

Each section of evidence was labeled -- library, office, cafeteria. There were scale models of the school, maps and photographs of the killers caught by surveillance cameras.

Every bullet, some mangled, was wrapped in a plastic bag. Bloody clothes were sealed in brown sacks and marked with bright orange “biohazard” stickers. There were television screens punctured by bullets and a case full of shotguns, pistols, pipe bombs and knives.

Onlookers seemed stunned by the firepower.

“These kids had all this stuff and the parents didn’t know?” asked Peg Parker, whose son graduated from Columbine in 1978. “It’s mind-boggling.”

The parents of the killers have kept a low profile since the shootings; they have reached damage settlements with many of the victims.

Like Parker, Tracy Simmons didn’t lose anyone at Columbine but felt compelled to see the display.

His wife, Rotchana, shuddered. “I can’t believe there are so many bullets,” she said. “I’m terrified that this is happening in America.”

The evidence included about a dozen cans of gasoline found in Harris’ and Klebold’s car. A video shows the two dressed in their trademark black trench coats and pretending to offer protection from bullies to kids at school.

“You know we can’t have weapons on school grounds,” says one. The pair then blast away with toy guns. “Well, everybody’s gone now,” Harris says.

Those same black coats, bloody and battered, sat folded up as evidence beside what looked like brass knuckles.

“They could have been stopped a million times,” said Brooks Brown, who knew Harris and had had a falling out with him.

It was Brown’s parents who told sheriff’s deputies about Harris’ behavior problems and his death threat against their son.

“When a guy says he’s suicidal and then homicidal, it’s a big warning sign,” Brown said. “My question is what happened to the report [of death threats]? These people all got killed because of a clerical error?”

Salazar, the attorney general, wants all the evidence in the case placed in the state archives and a report prepared on how to prevent future Columbines.

Bob Warnier, whose stepson Brian Anderson was wounded during the attack, had his own ideas about that. “I think people need to know what their kids are doing,” he said. “Parents should go through their kids’ rooms, they should get on their computers. They need to know what they are up to.”

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The complete Colorado attorney general’s report on the massacre is available online at latimes.com/columbine.