Columbine Video Released to Public

In the latest controversy to flare in the wake of the Columbine High School attack, families of the victims expressed outrage that a videotape of some of the carnage was released to the public Wednesday. The families were especially infuriated that the video has been set to music and that the public is being charged $25 to order it.

A District Court judge ordered the material released as part of several lawsuits families have filed against the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. Over the objections of the sheriff’s office, Judge Brooke Jackson ruled that the families were to be shown the tapes and given a copy of the investigative report.

Attorneys for the families have sought the information, which they say will bolster their allegation that authorities acted improperly in the rescue efforts during the shooting rampage that left 14 students, including the two gunmen, and a teacher dead on April 20, 1999.

“For the first time today, I saw my daughter being dragged over to the fire engine,” said Beth Nimmo, mother of slain student Rachel Scott and a party to the lawsuit. “I don’t need to see that, and nobody else needs to see that. It’s something you see in a gory music video.”

The tapes, broadcast in part Wednesday night on the newscasts of all three major networks, show the inside of the school’s library, where 10 students were killed, as well as footage from inside the bomb-damaged cafeteria, the rescue efforts outside the school and footage from TV news helicopters.

The scenes from the library--gruesome in their depiction of pools of blood flanked by police markers with the names of the dead--do not show any dead or injured students.

The videotape was assembled as a training video by the Littleton Fire Department and shown in seminars as many as 82 times around the country. Most of the video was shot by firefighters.

Once the judge ordered that the tapes be made available and issued no gag order, Jefferson County Atty. Frank Hutfless made the tapes available to the media and the public, saying the move would avoid potential lawsuits.

Similar reasoning outraged families months ago when the sheriff’s office allowed a reporter from Time magazine to view a video made by the gunmen, Dylan Harris and Eric Klebold. Once one member of the media had seen the tape, the sheriff said, he could not in fairness prevent others from viewing it.

The school system spokesman, Rick Kaufman, said: “We believe showing the images on the video will continue to traumatize and retraumatize the victims of that tragedy.”

Accompanied by Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You” and Cheryl Wheeler’s “If It Were Up to Me,” an anti-gun song, the video begins with footage through the library doors and shows a scene of recent chaos: Windows shattered by gunfire, books strewn about the floor, chairs on their sides and pools of blood on desktops and staining the light carpet.

Littleton fire officials did not comment on the tape. A firefighter produced it on his own time, adding the soundtrack.

For its part, Arista Records, which is McLachlan’s label, demanded in a statement that the song be removed “from this exploitative videotape.”

James Rouse, an attorney for some of the victims’ families, said his clients were horrified by the tape and asked that the sound be turned down as they viewed it.

“I don’t know why you’d call it a training video. It’s more of a documentary with a musical background,” Rouse said.