Police Begin Removal of 15 Dead at School

Police Wednesday began removing 15 bodies--all but one of them students--from the smashed-out, shot-up Columbine High School here as officials confessed they were baffled by what drove two outcast teenagers to turn a stockpile of weapons and small explosives on their classmates.

Flags flew at half-staff, the skies clouded gray and the Denver area braced for a late-season snowstorm while all around the campus grief-torn students, parents, teachers and counselors set out on a long road to healing.

Twenty-three people were injured in Tuesday’s rampage, 16 remained hospitalized Wednesday evening, and the community here was left stunned that the nation’s increasing school violence had suddenly cast its shadow on them.

But because the two gunmen--Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold, members of the school’s so-called Trench Coat Mafia--apparently killed themselves in their final bursts of gunfire, police said answers to explain the nation’s worst shooting in a two-year rash of schoolyard carnage will be slow in coming.

The horror of Tuesday was reverberating throughout the nation. At the state Capitol in Denver, lawmakers withdrew a set of major gun bills, including one that would have made it easier for Colorado gun owners to conceal their weapons.

In Washington, President Clinton echoed the nation’s grief, and his administration began sending a phalanx of federal officials here, not only to help investigate the shooting spree but also to assist those likely to suffer for years with the emotional scars of what had been a normal day nearing the end of the school year.

Here in Littleton, hundreds of Columbine students spontaneously converged on a park near the school Wednesday afternoon, creating several makeshift memorials, carrying hundreds of bouquets of carnations and daisies--red, white and yellow--and standing around in knots of 10 and 20, sometimes sobbing uncontrollably.

Then they began checking with one another in a desperate attempt to learn who among their friends had lived, and who had died.

Authorities said Harris, 18, and Klebold, 17, left no clues as to why they left classes Tuesday morning and slipped out to their cars, returning to school heavily armed. Police said even the boys’ parents in this upscale community were unaware that their sons were secretly building an arsenal.

But officials did disclose that the shooters slung on their trademark long, black coats and fired two sawed-off, pistol-grip shotguns, a semi-automatic handgun and a 9-millimeter rifle as they grinned and tossed more than 30 pipe bombs and other small explosives inside and around the school grounds.

Sophisticated Bombs From Common Items

Police described the explosives as rather sophisticated devices, made from components commonly sold in hardware stores and groceries. And although police theorized that it must have taken some time to gather, store and construct the bombs, they have not arrested any of the boys’ friends or classmates in connection with the murder rampage.

“Right now we have no reason to believe we have any other suspects beyond the two who are dead,” said Deputy Steve Davis, a Jefferson County sheriff’s spokesman.

“There were no suicide notes or anything. And I really don’t know if the parents were aware of their kids’ involvement.”

But his boss, Sheriff John Stone, in an observation revealing some dissension among law enforcement officials, said after seeing the bodies strewn about the school: “I have concerns whether just two people could carry all that out in there.

“This is not something they did overnight,” the sheriff added. “There was a lot of planning that went into this. We also found more explosives and another sawed-off shotgun at one of the suspect’s house. I’d say it took considerable time to get all this.”

In another apparent contradiction, Jefferson County Dist. Atty. Dave Thomas said that during the shooting, Klebold’s father called police and offered to help negotiate with his son to end the standoff. But if the parents did not know that their sons were stockpiling weapons, why would Klebold’s father suppose that his son was a suspect rather than one of the hundreds of terrified students inside the school?

Police also revealed that a deputy assigned to patrol the school heard the first shots and fired back at the two boys; he missed. The deputy then retreated and called for back-up help.

Police said the first SWAT team to arrive also engaged in gunfire with the two youths. They too missed, and the standoff wore on for another 90 minutes.

During that time, as frantic parents rushed to the school, the 2,000-member student population and staff ran for exits, closets and locked doors as shots could be heard and bombs sounded.

Police Defend Course of Restraint

But police defended their decision not to go busting into the school right away, mindful that they did not immediately know who were the students and who were firing the guns.

“We had no idea who was a victim and who was a suspect,” Davis said. “And a dead police officer would not be able to help anyone.”

In the end, police said, the suspects killed nine males and four females, including one adult male staff member described as a popular teacher and girls’ basketball coach.

Two of the bodies were found outside the school; 10 were discovered inside the roomy school library, many of the bodies still sitting in their chairs. The 13th victim, the teacher, was found in a closet down the hall from the library.

The two killers also lay dead in the library, surrounded by the worst of their damage. But just as they were unsure of the boys’ motive, officials also could not say exactly when the youths turned their guns on themselves.

“Based upon the location of the suspects’ bodies, their proximity to their own weapons and the nature of their wounds, the best evidence is these were self-inflicted shotgun wounds to the head,” Thomas said.

Thomas did not go inside the building; he instead viewed crime photographs. But Sheriff Stone, after touring the inside of the large, sprawling facility, came away sick at heart.

Fire alarms had gone off, strobe lights pounded and four inches of water had roared out of the cafeteria. In the library, one single light was left eerily turned on.

“The school is very, very shot out,” Stone said. “We found probably eight or nine empty clips of ammunition, and those clips carried everywhere from 10 to 15 rounds each. Plus a substantial number of spent shotgun shells were found.”

Added to that arsenal were the more than 30 explosive devices, some thrown indiscriminately around the campus, some stashed in cars, some hidden in backpacks.

Stone said some of them were pipe bombs a mere six to eight inches long. Others were explosives rigged to timing devices. Still others were constructed with propane cylinders that Stone said “can be very deadly and have the capacity to spray nails.”

Obsessed With Hitler, Satan, Death

Students recalled Harris and Klebold as outcasts, members of the Trench Coat Mafia who at times obsessed with death and fantasized about Hitler and Satan.

Some said they chose Tuesday because it was April 20, noting that some kids refer to “420” as some kind of weird marijuana designation. Some students remembered how Harris and Klebold hated student athletes because they were the popular kids; witnesses said the shooters yelled “All jocks stand up!” before opening fire.

Authorities searched both boys’ homes and took away Harris’ computer equipment.

Early reports had a Web site for one of the shooters with this message posted before the shooting:

“Preparin’ for the big april 20!! You’ll all be sorry that day!”

But America Online officials said the message actually was posted after the shootings, apparently by someone seeking attention.

Nevertheless, the Trench Coat Mafia did leave a message in last year’s school yearbook, where 13 members declared:

“Who says we are different? Insanity’s healthy! Remember rocking parties at Kristen’s, foosball at Joe’s and fencing at Christopher’s! Stay alive, stay different, stay crazy. Oh, and stay away from CREAM SODA!!! Love always, the chicks.”

Police briefly detained and questioned on Tuesday four boys who were friends of Harris and Klebold, then released them. Like the two suspects, the Trench Coat Mafia members were notorious for wearing black clothes and portraying themselves as Gothic figures. “It’s creepy,” said one girl.

Harris and Klebold also were briefly known to police. In January 1998 they were arrested together for stealing some property inside a car. They were sent to a juvenile diversion program, which they completed in February of this year.

Otherwise, that was all the police knew of them. Even Stone said that, until this week, he had never even heard of anything called a Trench Coat Mafia.

“A lot of people had contact with these kids,” Thomas said. “But who saw any danger signs?”

Klebold’s parents could not be reached for comment. Harris’ parents released a brief statement, calling this a “senseless tragedy” and adding: “Please say prayers for everyone touched by these terrible events.”

Another father, Rick Castaldo, visited his son, Richard, at a local hospital; the boy was one of the first victims, shot outside the school. He was hit four times, in the chest, arms and abdomen, and was in intensive care with a breathing tube down his throat.

Richard plays tuba and the saxophone in the school band, so his lungs were healthy, and he was “just aching to speak” to his family, his father said.

“The nurses put a pen in his hand and held a clipboard up,” his father said. “Every time he writes, he writes: ‘When does the breathing tube come out?”’

In Washington, Clinton pledged federal assistance to the victims and their families. “All of us are struggling to understand exactly what happened and why,” he said.

But the president did not speak to the nation’s gun laws, even as billboards around the Denver area are announcing the National Rifle Assn.’s annual convention in town next week. Nor did he address a motive for the Littleton tragedy.

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” conceded White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was scheduled to meet here today with community members as part of the federal victims assistance program. At the Department of Justice, officials were seriously considering an idea of finding a way to post a policeman in every school in the nation.

Said Reno: “It’s impossible to make sense of a tragic event like this.”

*

Times staff writers J.R. Moehringer in Littleton and Edwin Chen, Robert L. Jackson and Eric Lichtblau in Washington contributed to this story.

Video clips, additional photos and updates on the shootings are available today on The Times’ Web site:

https://www.latimes.com/shootings

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