The tragic event that took place on February 3 at Moscow school No. 263 makes you feel fear when you let your child go to school. Next, I want to tell you about the most high-profile murders in schools in the world that have occurred in the past 40 years.
February 3, 2014
School No. 263 in Otradnoy city of Moscow, Russia
A 10th grade student, Sergei, came to the school around noon with two rifles and forced the guard to let him inside. The law enforcement officer obeyed, but managed to call the police by pressing the alarm button.
The teenager proceeded to the classroom on the first floor, where the lesson of geography 10-A was taking place. There were more than 20 children in the office. The rest of the students and school staff were urgently evacuated from the building.
A schoolboy shot geography teacher Andrei Kirillov in the stomach from the threshold. Then he asked, addressing no one knows who, whether the geographer was alive, and made a control shot in the head of the victim.
When the police arrived at the building, the offender opened fire on the police officers. As a result, one law enforcement officer was mortally wounded, and another officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was wounded.
Geography teacher Andrei Kirillov died.
Senior police sergeant Sergei Bushuev died of wounds.
By one o'clock in the afternoon, the offender was arrested, he was taken to the pre-trial detention center. Children who witnessed the massacre were taken out of the building.
December 14, 2012
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, USA
On the morning of the fateful day, 20-year-old Adam Peter Lanza shot and killed his mother with a Marlin 22 rifle, after which he got into her car and headed to Sandy Hook Elementary School.
At 9:30 am local time, Lanza broke into the Sandy Hook School and silently began to walk around the classrooms, shooting children and their teachers.
In total, 27 people died at his hands, including 5 teachers, 20 children and a school director.
At 9:36 a.m., a signal about a shooting at an elementary school went to the police. The caller said he heard at least a hundred shots. Someone from the school staff, most likely a security guard, managed to warn of the danger over the speakerphone. It may have saved the lives of hundreds of children. The teachers closed the doors to the classrooms, some of the students hid in the cupboards.
At 9:38 a.m., the police were informed that the shooting had ended. During this time, Adam Lanza shot children in two classrooms and killed the headmaster in her office. Hearing the approach of the police, he shot himself.
It is noteworthy that Adam's acquaintances give him very flattering characteristics. According to them, he was neat and hardworking.
It was known that the young man suffered from Asperger's syndrome, but this disease, as a rule, does not contribute to aggressive behavior.
Four days of mourning has been declared in the United States.
April 7, 2011
Tasso da Silveira Municipal School in Realengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
On the morning of April 7 at about 8:00 am local time, dressed in all black, 23-year-old Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, a former student of the school, entered Tasso da Silveira with a backpack on his shoulders. Leaving his gym bag on the first floor, he went up to the third floor and entered the eighth grade classroom, introducing himself as the new teacher.
Oliveira then took out two revolvers from his backpack and started firing randomly at the students. He aimed his victims in the head. At the same time, the shooter chose mainly girls. The students immediately started running out of the classroom. Many of them, once in a safe place, began to film the shooting on mobile phone cameras.
Then the shooting moved into the corridor and the adjacent classroom. After that, having received several wounds in a shootout with the police, the man committed suicide. A total of 12 people were killed, 10 of whom were girls. Another 12 were wounded.
In the photo - shot Oliveira
Later, a suicide note was found in the criminal's house, in which he spoke of his intention to commit suicide, as he was infected with the AIDS virus.
In addition, during the search, texts were found that indicate that the man was obsessed with terrorist ideas.
April 16, 2007
Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
Around 6:45 am on the day of the tragedy, one of the students of the institute named Seung Hee Cho approached the entrance to the West Ambler dormitory, where at that time there were 895 students. He went inside using his magnetic card and killed two students.
The Korean then returned to his room, where he changed into bloody jeans and a white T-shirt, deleted all emails from his Internet mailbox, wrote a suicide note and a video letter. About two hours after the first shots were fired, the killer went to the post office and sent a note and video to NBC.
After that, the young man moved towards the educational building. Over his shoulders hung a backpack containing a Glock 19, a Walther P22, a hunting knife and a hammer, as well as 400 rounds of ammunition and 12 ten-round magazines. At around 9:40 a.m., Cho entered room 206, where he opened fire.
For several hours, the killer cold-bloodedly shot students and teachers, while the police who arrived at the scene could not even establish how many criminals were in the building. After the massacre, Cho Sen Hu put a bullet in his head...
The Virginia massacre was the largest massacre in U.S. history...
September 13, 2006
Dawson College, Montreal, Canada
25-year-old Canadian Kimvir Gill opened fire on Dawson College students with a self-loading carbine CX-4 Storm. As a result of the shooting, one student died and 19 were injured. The attacker himself committed suicide when he saw that he was surrounded by police.
Gill managed to injure 20 people; The 18-year-old girl subsequently died in the hospital.
From the diaries, computer, and personal blog of the police killer, it became known that he was a fan of games such as Hitman and Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Also, his computer was filled with photos, videos and texts regarding the massacre at Columbine School.
Eyewitnesses say that Jill, approaching the college, opened fire indiscriminately, shooting at students without aiming. In total, the young man fired 65 shots in the building. Also, 15 shots were fired on the street.
In the killer's diaries, the police found many entries that speak of his aggressive attitude towards others, for example: "I hate this world."
On his blog, Gill promised that he would be remembered as the Angel of Death. “Ready for business” - read the caption under one of his latest photographs. There was also an epitaph to himself: "He lived quickly, died young ..."
Two young men, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, broke into Columbine High School with guns...
The terrible massacre lasted four and a half hours. During this time, the youths injured dozens of students and killed twelve fellow students and one teacher, and then committed suicide - each of them shot himself in the head.
The whole country was horrified by the senselessness and monstrosity of the merciless massacre in an ordinary school, perpetrated by inconspicuous teenagers.
Eric and Dylan began preparing for the massacre at the school almost a year before the events.
The killers are well prepared: this page of the weekly meticulously lists everything that needs to be brought to school - "bring and plant a bomb", "leave the classroom at 11.17", "wash your hands".
In their albums, these photos were found.
80 investigators were involved in the investigation. They collected ten thousand physical evidence and questioned fourteen hundred witnesses.
And they came to the conclusion that in this way the killers achieved fame.
March 11, 2009
Albertwil-Realschule College in Winnenden, Germany
17-year-old teenager Tim Kretschmer staged a massacre in his former school, and then on the streets of Winnenden and Wendlingen, during which 15 people died and 11 were injured. After that, Tim committed suicide while surrounded by police.
On March 11, Kretschmer took his father's pistol - a nine-millimeter Beretta - and a large amount of cartridges for it and left his house, wearing army boots and black clothes. Once in the school, the offender opened fire, moving from office to office. According to the BBC, Tim shot the victims in the head, showing by this that the shots were not accidental.
In total, about 60 shots were fired at the school. After that, the shooter, taking a random driver hostage, forced him, under threat of death, to drive him about a hundred kilometers in the direction of Wendlingen. After 2.5 hours, a car with Kretschmer drove up to one of the car dealerships 40 kilometers from the city. Tim entered the building and fired 13 shots in it.
Another 28 indiscriminate shots were fired by the teenager in the parking lot of a car dealership - including the last one, to his head. As it turned out later, 3 days before the shooting, the girl whom Tim was courting refused to meet with him. The police said that the girl was one of the first to be killed at the school.
Also, according to the police and the prosecutor, from April to September 2008 the young man was treated in a psychiatric-neurological hospital. However, Tim's parents deny this fact.
November 7, 2007
Jokela Lyceum in Tuusula, Finland
At 11:40 a.m., 18-year-old student Eric Auvinen entered his high school with a 22-caliber Sig Sauer Mosquito pistol and fifteen 10-round magazines to go with it. Opening fire on the students, Auvinen fired 106 shots. 40 minutes after the attack began, he shot himself in the head in the men's room.
Auvinen's victims were 8 people: six students (5 boys and one girl), a school nurse and a lyceum director. Not a single shot was fired by the police.
It is known that on the eve of the tragedy, the killer posted his manifesto on the YouTube portal entitled "Massacre at Yokel School - November 7, 2007." It is also worth noting that the teenager called himself Natural Selector (“a tool of natural selection”) and Sturmgeist (“storm spirit”).
March 24, 1998
Jonesboro School, Arkansas, USA
As a result of the shooting opened by students of the school, 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 13-year-old Johnson Mitchell, 4 children and a teacher were killed. More than 10 people were injured of varying severity.
The teenagers who started the shooting were captured by the police, who promptly arrived at the scene. During the investigation, Mitchell and Golden confessed to committing the massacre, but they could not explain their motives. Both were sentenced to imprisonment until the age of majority - 8 and 10 years respectively.
May 28, 1975
Centennial Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario, Canada
16-year-old Michael Peter Slobodyan, one of the students at the school, came to class with two self-loading rifles, .22 and .44, which he carried into the building, hiding in a guitar case.
Michael was angry at the physics teacher for giving a bad grade that kept him out of medical school and wanted to get back at him. Due to circumstances, Slobodian was unable to reach the physics room, located on the floors above, and started shooting at an English lesson.
After killing a classmate and an English teacher, and then injuring 13 more people, Michael went into the corridor, where he committed suicide right at the entrance to the classroom.
Eric David Harris(English) Eric David Harris, April 9, 1981 - April 20, 1999) and Dylan Bennett Klebold(English) Dylan Bennet Klebold, September 11, 1981 - April 20, 1999) - two eleventh graders who staged a mass murder at Columbine School. 13 people were killed and 23 wounded. Three people were also injured when they tried to escape. Ultimately, 18-year-old Harris and 17-year-old Klebold committed suicide at the crime scene.
Eric David Harris was born in Wichita, Kansas to Wayne Nelson Harris and Katherine Ann Poole. He had a three-year older brother, Kevin. His father was a US Air Force transport pilot, and his mother was a housewife. Because of Wayne's profession, the Harrises moved frequently, and in July 1993 the Harrises moved from Plattsburgh, New York to Littleton, Colorado when Wayne Harris retired due to staff cuts.
Here, for the first three years, the Harrises lived in rented premises. Wayne then took a job with the Englewood Aviation Safety Services Corporation, and Katherine began working as a catering provider. Eric's older brother Kevin went to the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Eric himself went to Ken Caryl High School, where he met Dylan Klebold in the seventh or eighth grade. In 1996, the Harrises finally bought a $180,000 house south of Columbine High School, which Eric had started attending the year before. Not far from the Harrises lived Brooks Brown, whom Eric met on the school bus, and who had been friends with Dylan Klebold since the first grade.
Dylan Bennet Klebold was born in Lakewood, Colorado to Thomas Ernst Klebold and Susan Francis Yassenoff. He had a four-year older brother, Byron Jacob. Like Byron, Dylan was named after a famous poet (Byron was named after the English Romantic poet George Byron, and in Dylan's case it was the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas). Dylan's father was a real estate geophysicist, and his mother worked in Colorado with the disabled. Both attended a Lutheran church, and Dylan, along with Byron, were confirmed in the Lutheran tradition. At home, the family observed some rituals in keeping with Susan's Jewish heritage, whose grandfather, Leo Yassenoff, was an influential builder and philanthropist (and even built a Jewish cultural and social space in Columbus, Ohio, where Thomas and Susan were from). Thomas Klebold's parents died early, and he was raised by his brother, who was 18 years older than him.
In 1990, the Klebold family settled in Deer Creek Canyon south of Lakewood, where Dylan attended Normandie Elementary School from first through second grade, and then moved to Governor's Ranch Elementary School, where he was a member of the CHIPS group ( " Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students"- a group of highly gifted and capable students). Somewhere during this period, he met Brooks Brown. Later, during the investigation, his parents recalled that Dylan felt somewhat overwhelmed at Governor's Ranch, and therefore they believe that the transition to Ken Caryl High School (where Dylan met Eric Harris) proved to be quite difficult for Dylan , as he was quiet and shy and therefore failed to settle down in the new team.
But since the transition from elementary to high school is difficult for most American teenagers, Thomas and Susan didn't focus on it much. All friends and acquaintances of the Klebold family have always described Dylan only in positive terms: a quiet loner, a shy guy with a good sense of humor. In scenes from the homemade documentary showing the youths plotting their alleged attacks, Klebold is seen constantly cutting off his lines due to the fact that he cannot help laughing. His parents recalled that Dylan never showed any signs of aggression around them.
In 1995, Dylan, Eric, Brooks, and their fourth friend Nathan Dyckman (whom Eric met in Spanish class) went to Columbine High School, which had recently undergone a fifteen million dollar renovation, and the guys became the first ninth graders, who saw the new decoration of the school, including the renovated cafeteria.
High school
At Columbine, Klebold worked extensively in the school theater as lighting and sound engineer, and was also an assistant in the computer lab, where he helped maintain the school server.
According to early reports of the investigation, Harris and Klebold were not particularly popular in Columbine and were bullied quite often. Ultimately, they themselves began to intimidate other students - from their diaries it is known that these were elementary school students and those who were suspected of being gay. According to some accounts, Harris and Klebold were members of a school group that called itself the "Trenchcoat Mafia", although they had no specific connection with the group, and the group photo of "Mafia Trench Coat" in the Columbine yearbook for 1998 is not captured. . However, Harris's father mentioned in 9-1-1 calls on April 20, 1999 that his son was indeed "a member of what they call the 'Trenchcoat Mafia'", although, as already stated, their association with the group was generally superficial. .
Shortly after they became friends, Harris and Klebold connected their personal computers to the same network and played many games over the Net. Harris created a series of levels for Doom, which later became known as the Harris levels. On the Internet, Harris used the nickname "REB" (short for "Rebel" (Eng. Rebel)) and other aliases, including "Rebldomakr", "Rebdoomer", and "Rebdomine". Klebold also used nicknames such as "VoDKa" and "VoDkA" (where the letters "DK" were initials). Harris had various websites where he created homemade "Doom" and "Duke Nukem 3D" levels that could be played online. Gradually, Harris' open threats to the people of his network environment and the world in general appeared on these sites. When Klebold and Harris started experimenting with homemade bombs, they started posting the results of the bombings on these websites. 
Three days before the shooting on Saturday, April 17, Klebold attended an evening school ball where his date was their classmate Robin Anderson (whom Dylan had met several years earlier at a Christmas party), however, she was present with him not as his girlfriend, but as his friend. Later, Anderson boasted to a guy she knew:
« I convinced my friend Dylan, who hates dancing, sportsmen and has never had a date, let alone a girl, to come with me! Either I'm really pretty or just really pushy.
Nathan Dyckman later recalled that Dylan behaved more than normal that evening, and even made good plans for his future. In particular, he said that he was going to go to college in Arizona (on March 25, the Klebolds went there to see Dylan's room in a university dormitory). Harris was out of work that evening. His acquaintances recalled that he tried to invite several girls, but all rejected his invitation. Ultimately, he planned to spend this time with Susan DeWitt. She came to his house, where they watched a movie, after which he invited her to an after-prom party, but she also refused and went to her house, and Harris met his friends at the party alone. It is also known about his relationship with girls that in his first year at Columbine, he met Tiffany Typer in a German class and on the very first day of his acquaintance he volunteered to walk her home. It was their only meeting, and the next time she refused to go with him, he acted out a false suicide, spilling fake blood around him. Later in her yearbook, he will write in German "Ich bin Gott" (Russian. I'm God).
Harris' questionnaire
In their first year at Columbine, the boys began working at Blackjack Pizza, the place where their colleague Philip Durant would later introduce them to Mark Maines, from whom they would buy some of the weapons used in the gunfight. Together with them, Eric's friend Chris Morris worked there, who, after a shootout, was arrested for suspicion of complicity, but later acquitted.
Harris was a fan of bands such as Rammstein, KMFDM, Orbital, and The Prodigy. Shortly after the shootout, KMFDM published an article on their website condemning Harris and Klebold's violence and denying that their music had anything to do with it.
terrorist attack
On the morning of April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold smuggled bags of improvised explosives and semi-automatic weapons into Columbine High School. Having opened fire on the street, the teenagers continued their brutal hunt in the classrooms and corridors. Their bloody path ended in the school library, where the students were just studying. Here the guys shot at close range and finished off a few more of their victims. They sought out someone specifically and purposefully, settling scores, but in general they killed everyone in a row. At the same time, Eric and Dylan exchanged jokes and laughed merrily. Having finished their terrible deed, both friends, wandering through the empty corridors and school premises, returned to the library, where they fired their last shots, shooting themselves.
It is known that even during the massacre, the school was cordoned off by the police, special forces and rangers. The information that the authorities had was too contradictory for a correct assessment of the combat situation - for example, the policemen were sure that a well-trained and equally well-equipped terrorist squad was operating in the school. This opinion was further confirmed after a short firefight through the window openings.
The result of that terrible morning was 15 killed, along with Eric and Dylan, and 21 wounded.
After these events, many versions of the motives for this crime, which did not fit in the minds of ordinary people, sounded. Both violent computer games and heavy music, which both guys were fond of, were also accused. The antidepressants that were prescribed to Harris were also blamed, and even the actual legislation that made the very availability of weapons for two teenagers possible. "School apartheid" was also a separate motive, dividing all students into "athletes", "excellent students" and others who remained beyond popularity.
However, numerous versions of the motives of the crime remained versions - it turned out to be simply impossible to explain the act of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. How and when the souls of two American teenagers were so hopelessly mutilated, neither parents, nor friends, nor school teachers could explain.
« Hired assassins»
Shortly before the attack, Eric and Dylan filmed a video for a school project, where they themselves appeared as assassins shooting with fake weapons and student drug addicts. Their project's creative writing described sheer violence. On January 17, 1999, Eric wrote a short story based on the Doom game, regarding which his teacher said, "Your unique approach and your terrible handwriting is a good mood booster."
On the day of the shooting, their classmate Brooks Brown met Harris at his car at the start of his lunch break. They only recently reconciled after Eric threw an ice rock at Brooks' car and hit the windshield. Brown was surprised that Harris got out of the car with a gym bag, because he was out all morning and missed important tests. But Harris' reaction to Brown's bewilderment was indifferent. Eric told him, “Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home". A few minutes later, students leaving school for lunch saw Brooks at South Pierce Street near their home. Having moved away from the school for some distance, he heard shots and called the police from his neighbor's cell phone.
Acquisition of weapons
Since Harris and Klebold were minors at the time, Dylan's girlfriend Robin Anderson, then eighteen, made the purchase of two shotguns and a Hi-Point carbine for them. Later, Anderson was not charged for her participation in this case, because she did not violate any laws in this place, and she herself actively cooperated with the investigation. After receiving the Stevens 311D, Klebold sawed off the barrel, cutting it down to about 23 inches, which was already considered a felony under the National Firearms Act. Harris shortened the barrel of his shotgun to about 26 inches.
In modern history, the murder at Columbine has a special place. The massacre arranged by two teenagers shocked the whole country. This event led to a public controversy surrounding violent video games and permitting the purchase of firearms.
Harris and Klebold
The Columbine School in Colorado was no different from thousands of similar educational institutions throughout the country. Here in the last class studied friends Eric and Dylan. They also had strange habits. A few years before the Columbine massacre occurred, students ended up in the police because of disorderly conduct and computer theft.
Young people clashed with their peers. Eric Harris went to see a psychiatrist because he was diagnosed with depression. He was taking medication that could have had a negative effect on his behavior. Friends ran a blog on the Internet, where they posted amateur videos related to the production of explosives and weapons.
Shooters plan
On April 20, 1999, Eric and Dylan planned an explosion at their own school. To do this, they secretly engaged in the production of various bombs for several months. According to their plan, they were to plant explosives in the school cafeteria and go outside. After the detonator worked, the shooters were supposed to open fire on students and staff who ran out in a panic. In total, friends were going to kill up to five hundred people.
If the bombs were homemade by Eric and Dylan, then they had to resort to trickery to get the weapons. None of the shooters had yet reached the age of majority, so they asked a friend who went to Denver to buy guns. The girl was unaware of the plans of Harissa and Klebold.
Start of attack
On April 20, 1999, friends came to their school. They went to the cafeteria, where they quietly planted bombs with detonators, after which they hurriedly went outside. However, the explosion did not happen at the appointed time. At first, Harris and Klebold decided to wait a few more minutes for reassurance. However, when nothing happened after that, they switched to plan B.
It consisted in the fact that the shooters took weapons from their car and went to the classrooms to arrange a massacre. Thus began the massacre at Columbine High School. As Harris took his gym bag with him, he was greeted by a school friend who asked him why he missed class. Instead of a clear answer, Eric said to a friend: “I like you. Leave. Go home." A minute later, this guy heard the first shots.
First killed
The first victims of the shooters were a couple who were sitting on the lawn in front of the school. The girl died immediately from bullet wounds, and her friend later became disabled. After that, the shooters opened indiscriminate fire on the guys who were in sight. So three friends were seriously injured, who decided that the high school students were just playing them.
Subsequently, the massacre at the Columbine school was transferred inside it. The shooters entered the building from the back entrance. Once in the western wing, they began to shoot those who were in the corridor. The next targets were the students sitting in the classrooms nearby. One of the teachers went to the library, from where she called 911. Soon the police learned about the incident. The outfit went to the school.
When the police arrived, Klebold and Hariss were already inside the building. The officers managed to notice the shooters through the window, after which a shootout ensued. However, no one was hurt or injured.
Massacre in the library
At this time, friends were heading to the library. This is where they killed the most people. Their victims were 10 students. They all hid under tables when Dylan Klebold and his comrade entered the room. However, this did not save them. Here, the shooting at the US Columbine School was carried out to kill. The killers came close to their victims and shot them in cold blood. Teenagers mocked the wounded and dumbfounded peers, asking them tricky questions about the desire to die and faith in God. The shooters were clearly enjoying themselves. According to surviving eyewitnesses, Klebold and Harris were constantly laughing and joking with each other.
In addition, the comrades took carbon dioxide bombs with them, which they decided to use directly in the library. One of them was thrown under the table where a school student was hiding. Some of the victims were fired as many as a dozen shots. When the friends left the library twenty minutes later, 12 people had already been killed in the school. Another teacher bled to death and died some time later. Thus, Klebold and Harris took the lives of 13 people. The list of the dead appeared in a few hours after the tragedy.
Friends return to the dining room
The shooters descended into the dining room, where the failed bombs were still stored. Eyewitnesses recalled that while still in the library, one of the friends said that they would blow up the school anyway. Apparently, they went to the dining room to finally activate the explosives stored there. Surveillance cameras were working in the room, which recorded the guys in the last minutes of their lives. The comrades puzzled over how they had with them which was produced in the garage in preparation for the attack on the school.
Harris threw the bottle at the place where the bombs were stored. Friends hurriedly left the room, expecting an explosion. It happened, but its power was not at all as deadly as the schoolchildren had hoped. A security camera recorded the moment the cafeteria was on fire, following the explosion of a fireball from a bomb.
Suicide of Harris and Klebold
In the meantime, an evacuation of students was organized on the street, who were injured even before the shooters were in the building. The police developed a plan of action. Special forces arrived on the scene. The situation was aggravated by the fact that no one knew the exact number of attackers on the school. Initially, the police believed that they were dealing with an organized terrorist attack in which a dozen people took part.
When the friends left the cafeteria, they headed back up to the top floor. From there began the last skirmish with the policemen who were on the street. Friends fired until they had almost no bullets left. Then the shooting at the US Columbine school ended, Hariss and Klebold went to the next room, where they committed suicide.
The work of sappers and special forces
After the noise at the school subsided, the police still decided to storm. Special forces and sappers were sent there. The latter took up the library, where there were several failed bombs. They needed to be neutralized in the first place, as they interfered with the evacuation of the wounded and the removal of the corpses. Soon, the sappers were informed that explosives were also stored in the teenagers' car. They were also disposed of, and no one else was hurt. It turned out that the shooters did not take with them all their ammunition. Explosives and ammunition were found in the car.
However, when SWAT was in the building, it became clear that the shooters had already been finished. Their bodies were found nearby in a burning room on the top floor. Apparently, Eric Harris left behind a Molotov cocktail that crashed and started a fire. This was evidenced by the smoke detector signal, which worked a minute after the death of teenagers. Suicides fired shots in the mouth and temple. Death for them came instantly.
The meaning of tragedy
Together with the names of the shooters, the list of the dead includes 15 people. In memory of the victims, a memorial complex was built in the city. At the time when the shooting at Columbine School had just happened, it was the third largest such incident in US history by the number of victims. We are talking about massacres in educational institutions. However, it was this case in Colorado that became world famous.
The reason for this was the work of the then media. Soon there were dozens of reporters from various television channels and newspapers near the school. The tragedy also resonated with the international community. It was the journalists who drew the attention of every American to what happened in an ordinary provincial school. The society demanded the results of the investigation by the responsible authorities.
Since that April day, the whole world has known that the Columbine School exists. The year 1999 remained in the mass consciousness associated with this tragedy. The word "Columbine" has become winged. Unfortunately, similar incidents of shootings in US educational institutions, including schools and universities, continue to be repeated.
In 2007, a similar tragedy occurred at Virginia Tech when 33 people died. A few years later, gunfire broke out at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It killed 28 people.
Investigation of what happened
When the names of the shooters became known to the police, investigators immediately went to their homes. They feared that important evidence would be destroyed. That did not happen. The investigation continued until January 2000, when details of what had happened were made public.
Until that moment, various conspiracy theories of what happened were popular in the United States. For example, teenagers were considered religious fanatics who staged a massacre at the Columbine School. generally was full of scandals associated with various totalitarian sects.
public scandal
After the details of the life of two shooters from Colorado became clear, there were several media scandals. Investigators found Harris' diaries, where he described in detail his impressions of the computer game Doom. In this shooter you need to shoot at numerous monsters. Many Americans accused the game of promoting violence.
In addition, the public criticized several groups that teenagers listened to. Rammstein musicians from Germany were especially persecuted. They were known for their provocative entourage on stage. In addition, the lyrics of their songs often touched on the topic of violence, hatred and intolerance. Members of the group denied all accusations and condemned the shooters. A similar campaign was waged against Marilyn Manson. This American performer was noted for having prepared a special publication in the press, in which he talked about the causes of the tragedy. In addition, the musician wrote two songs dedicated to what happened at the Columbine school.
There was a heated discussion about the sale of firearms. In the aftermath of the tragedy, several states introduced laws prohibiting or restricting such trade. American law has a number of features. General federal regulations do not apply in such matters. Each subject of the state decides in its own way whether to allow or prohibit the sale of weapons. The same rules apply to the regulation of the death penalty, etc.
A pre-arranged attack by two high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on other students and staff at their school using small arms and improvised explosive devices on April 20, 1999, Hitler's birthday. The terrorists turned out to be Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, students at the school. In terms of the number of victims, the tragedy once ranked third among massacres in US educational institutions.
The first signs of aggression began to appear in 1996, when Eric Harris registered a personal website on the company's server. By the end of the year, the site already contained instructions on how to harm others and make explosives, as well as stories about all the trouble arranged by Harris and Klebold. In early 1997, the blog first began to show signs of Harris' growing anger towards society.
Due to the low number of visitors, Harris's site did not cause alarm and fear until the end of 1997, when Dylan Klebold gave the address to Brooks Brown, a former friend of Harris. On the site, the young man found numerous death threats directed at him. Brown's mother repeatedly contacted the Jefferson County police, and investigator Michael Gwerra was aware of the site's existence.
Future terrorists filmed videos demonstrating that they had weapons. Recordings showed that the boys were preparing a plan to blow up the school, rivaling the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. The diaries also contained ideas about escaping to Mexico, hijacking a plane from Denver International Airport and using it to blow up a building in New York.
Harris and Klebold planned to bomb the school cafeteria at the time when it would have the largest number of people - several hundred. The optimal time for this was determined on the basis of observations and records made in advance. The attackers hoped that after detonating the bombs in the cafeteria, they would shoot the surviving students and teachers on their way out. Then, when ambulances, firefighters, police and journalists began to drive up to the school, the bombs planted in the teenagers' cars were expected to go off and kill people outside. However, bombs in the school cafeteria and cars did not work.
On the day of the tragedy, the youths met at Harris's car near the school, took two 9-kilogram (each based on a propane tank), after which they entered the school cafeteria a few minutes before the start of the first lunch break and placed several bags of bombs there. When the bombs didn't go off, they fired chaotically, causing a brutal massacre in the library. Leaving the library, the young men went to the area with offices. They looked into many classrooms through the glass and met the eyes of the students hiding in them, but did not try to break into them. According to witnesses, Hariss and Klebold's behavior seemed aimless. The students hiding in the cafeteria heard one of the attackers say, “Today the world will end. Today we die."
The SWAT team and the police quickly arrived at the scene, trying to evacuate and rescue the schoolchildren. Because of the shooting covering the evacuation, witnesses were unable to determine exactly when Harris and Klebold committed suicide.
It is worth noting that this shocking event gave rise to and inspired about 9 followers (for example, on April 16, 2007, a 23-year-old student from South Korea, Cho Seung-hee, opened fire with two pistols, first in the student dormitory, and then in the academic building of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, killing 32 and injuring 25 others, the shooter committed suicide in one of the auditoriums.In his farewell video, he mentioned "martyrs Eric and Dylan")
School photo 
From CCTV cameras 
Suicide 
The funeral 
