It looks like any other high school photo a group of teenagers smiling and making silly faces. But look a little closer, and with the benefit of hindsight, the picture becomes incredibly sinister.
Sitting in the top left of the photo two of the students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold can be seen making a fake gun sign at the camera. Just a few weeks later the 12th-grade students would murder 12 of their fellow students and one teacher at the school where the picture was taken, Columbine High School, on April 20, 1999.
Ten of the victims were killed in the school library, where the pair then committed suicide. As the world reeled at the senseless killing, it emerged that the boys - unpopular students and targets for bullying - had already been preparing for the massacre at the time as long as a year earlier. And their gesture, which went unnoticed at the time, wasn’t the only clue they had given about the impending school shooting.
Harris and Klebold had used their schoolwork to foreshadow the massacre. Harris wrote a paper on school shootings and a poem from the perspective of a bullet, while Klebold wrote a short story about a man killing students. It worried his teacher so much she alerted his parents. Meanwhile, in a psychology class, Harris wrote he dreamed of going on a shooting spree with Klebold. And the pair’s journals, which were released to the public in 2006, showed how they had prepared methodologically for the attack, documenting their arsenal of weapons and drawing up plans.
They included plans to set off explosives during lunch which would kill and injure hundreds of students, how they would kill those who attempted to flee the school, and how they would kill emergency personnel responding by turning their vehicles into car bombs. The months prior to the shooting Harris and Klebold acquired two 9mm firearms - one TEC-9 pistol and one Hi-Point rifle, constructed 99IEDs using instructions found on the internet and sawed off the barrels and stocks of their shotguns. On the morning of April 20, the boys had set up a firebomb to detonate in a small field three miles south of Columbine High School, which was intended to distract emergency personnel who could respond to the shooting, giving them time to kill more students and staff.
However, the device only partially detonated and was quickly put out by the fire department. Arriving at 11.10am at Columbine High School, they left two 20lb propane bombs hidden in duffel bags in the cafeteria before lunch began, before returning to their vehicles to await the explosion, set to happen at 11.17am.If the bombs had detonated it is estimated that they would have killed or seriously wounded all 488 students who were in the cafeteria, and probably collapsed the ceiling causing the library to fall.
But when the bombs failed to explode, the boys killed three students and wounded several others outside the school before heading inside, shooting anyone they encountered on their way. The reportedly gleefully taunted their victims before shooting them at point-blank range. The majority of fatalities occurred in the school’s library, where Klebold reportedly shouted “We’re going to kill every one of you,” before spraying the room with bullets and tossing in pipe bombs. Aaron Cohn, one of the survivors, said: “They were laughing after they shot. It was like they were having the time of their life.
”Another, Byron Kirkland, recalled: “There was a girl crouched beneath a desk in the library, and the guy came over and said, ‘Peek a boo,’ and shot her in the neck.“They were hooting and hollering and getting a big joy out of this.”One student saw one of them shoot a boy at point-blank range, in the back of the head.“He was just casually walking,” said Wade Frank, a senior at the time. “He wasn’t in any hurry.
”Before the SWAT team finally entered the building at 1:38 p.m., Columbine shooters Harris and Klebold’s rampage was long over. In what was the worst school shooting in US history,12 students and one teacher lay dead and 21 others were injured, some of whom would be paralysed. And Harris and Klebold were also dead, after having committed suicide in the school library. The Columbine massacre would become a byword for spree shootings at US schools and colleges, and inspire similar atrocities around the world.
Sitting in the top left of the photo two of the students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold can be seen making a fake gun sign at the camera. Just a few weeks later the 12th-grade students would murder 12 of their fellow students and one teacher at the school where the picture was taken, Columbine High School, on April 20, 1999.
Ten of the victims were killed in the school library, where the pair then committed suicide. As the world reeled at the senseless killing, it emerged that the boys - unpopular students and targets for bullying - had already been preparing for the massacre at the time as long as a year earlier. And their gesture, which went unnoticed at the time, wasn’t the only clue they had given about the impending school shooting.
Harris and Klebold had used their schoolwork to foreshadow the massacre. Harris wrote a paper on school shootings and a poem from the perspective of a bullet, while Klebold wrote a short story about a man killing students. It worried his teacher so much she alerted his parents. Meanwhile, in a psychology class, Harris wrote he dreamed of going on a shooting spree with Klebold. And the pair’s journals, which were released to the public in 2006, showed how they had prepared methodologically for the attack, documenting their arsenal of weapons and drawing up plans.
They included plans to set off explosives during lunch which would kill and injure hundreds of students, how they would kill those who attempted to flee the school, and how they would kill emergency personnel responding by turning their vehicles into car bombs. The months prior to the shooting Harris and Klebold acquired two 9mm firearms - one TEC-9 pistol and one Hi-Point rifle, constructed 99IEDs using instructions found on the internet and sawed off the barrels and stocks of their shotguns. On the morning of April 20, the boys had set up a firebomb to detonate in a small field three miles south of Columbine High School, which was intended to distract emergency personnel who could respond to the shooting, giving them time to kill more students and staff.
However, the device only partially detonated and was quickly put out by the fire department. Arriving at 11.10am at Columbine High School, they left two 20lb propane bombs hidden in duffel bags in the cafeteria before lunch began, before returning to their vehicles to await the explosion, set to happen at 11.17am.If the bombs had detonated it is estimated that they would have killed or seriously wounded all 488 students who were in the cafeteria, and probably collapsed the ceiling causing the library to fall.
But when the bombs failed to explode, the boys killed three students and wounded several others outside the school before heading inside, shooting anyone they encountered on their way. The reportedly gleefully taunted their victims before shooting them at point-blank range. The majority of fatalities occurred in the school’s library, where Klebold reportedly shouted “We’re going to kill every one of you,” before spraying the room with bullets and tossing in pipe bombs. Aaron Cohn, one of the survivors, said: “They were laughing after they shot. It was like they were having the time of their life.
”Another, Byron Kirkland, recalled: “There was a girl crouched beneath a desk in the library, and the guy came over and said, ‘Peek a boo,’ and shot her in the neck.“They were hooting and hollering and getting a big joy out of this.”One student saw one of them shoot a boy at point-blank range, in the back of the head.“He was just casually walking,” said Wade Frank, a senior at the time. “He wasn’t in any hurry.
”Before the SWAT team finally entered the building at 1:38 p.m., Columbine shooters Harris and Klebold’s rampage was long over. In what was the worst school shooting in US history,12 students and one teacher lay dead and 21 others were injured, some of whom would be paralysed. And Harris and Klebold were also dead, after having committed suicide in the school library. The Columbine massacre would become a byword for spree shootings at US schools and colleges, and inspire similar atrocities around the world.