Columbine High School Massacre — Photos

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April 17, 2019 12:56PM EDT

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — April 20, 1999. It’s a day that will live in infamy for the affect it had not just on a community, but also on an entire generation. On that day, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. 24 were also injured in the massacre, which ended after Dylan and Eric turned their guns on themselves.

While it wasn’t the first school shooting in the United States, at the time, it was the deadliest (and remained so until the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in 2012, and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.) The impact of the shooting cannot be understated, as the word ‘Columbine’ has become a byword for school shootings in the decades since the attack. Klebold and Harris’s motives remain unclear, and many things – depression, school bullying, aggressive music (specifically Marlyn Manson), violent video games – have been used to somehow make sense of the senseless.

Pictured here: ERIC HARRIS AND DYLAN KLEBOLD. COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN LITTLETON, DENVER, COLORADO, AMERICA – 1999

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — Fran Allison, right, comforts her daughter Brooke after they were reunited after a shooting at Columbine High School in Denver on April, 20, 1999. During the massacre, two gunmen killed 12 students and 1 teachers before turning the guns on themselves.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — Unidentified young women head to a library near Columbine High School where students and faculty members were evacuated after two gunmen went on a shooting rampage. In the months after the shooting, debates as to what caused the shooting raged on, with many blaming video games, violent music, school bullying and more.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — From left, Rachel Ruth, Rhianna Cheek and Mandi Annibel, all 16-year-old sophomores at Heritage High School in Littleton, Colo., console each other during a vigil service in Denver’s Civic Center Park that honored the victims of the shooting spree in Columbine High School.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — Kathy Zamora, left, comforts her friend Christine Medina, a sophomore at Columbine High School, after she escaped from the school during the massage. The two men, dressed in fatigues and black trench coats, opened fire and left 13 people dead. The gunmen then committed suicide.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — A woman embraces her daughter after they were reunited following a shooting at Columbine High School. Two decades later, the shooting would inspire an ‘obsessed’ woman, Sol Pais, to travel to Colorado, purchase a shotgun, and flee to the hills near the school. Authorities went on a ‘manhunt’ for her, worried that she would be another copycat shooter.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — Eric Harris, one of the gunmen who committed the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999. Eric was born in in Kansas and relocated often because of his father’s job in the U.S. Air Force. Harris’s journal hinted that bullying may have been a motivation for the killing, but he and Dylan Klebold plotted the crime for about a year.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — Here is an image that was broadcast nationwide following the massacre. The faces Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were in every paper and on every news broadcast following the Columbine massacre. While not the first school shooting, it was the deadliest at the time – until the Virginia Tech massacre eight years later.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — This aerial shows the news media compound near Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The census-designated place in Arapahoe and Jefferson counties is located immediately west of Littleton, a suburb of Denver, CO.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — Dubbed a as “grand, if badly implemented, terrorist bombing’ by USA Today, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris’s attack involved several homemade bombs. A diagram, seen here, shows the gunmen’s route throughout the school.

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Columbine High School Massacre

Columbine High School Massacre — An unidentified woman with 15 crosses posted on a hill above Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. in remembrance of the 15 people who died during a school shooting on April 20, 1999. One teacher, twelve students and the two gunmen — Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Including the attackers in memorials has often been a contentious act, as many view Eric and Dylan not worthy of remembrance.

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