A hunt for possible accomplices in the Columbine High School massacre intensified Thursday as police discovered a large propane gas bomb, studded with nails and pellets, inside the school kitchen and concluded the attackers’ goal was not only to kill fellow students but to blow up the school.
In all, police have found more than 30 homemade bombs, the largest constructed from two 20-pound propane tanks, hidden in and around the school, leading officials to speculate that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two seniors who went on Tuesday’s rampage, had planned a horrifying grand finale.
“These subjects were not only on a killing rampage, but they were going to destroy the school,” declared Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone. “They were going to burn the school up.”
Police were examining a note found in the home of one of the student gunmen as well as a videotape that some students described as a skit in which the two wore their trademark black trench coats and staged a mock shooting spree targeting school athletes–in retrospect, a possible dress rehearsal for the attack.
Fourteen students remained hospitalized from the attack, which left 15 dead including the gunmen, who apparently shot themselves in their heads.
Fearing booby traps, explosives experts used bomb-sniffing dogs as they worked in shifts, around-the-clock, to pick through thousands of lockers, closets, boxes and backpacks that students had dropped in panic as they fled while bullets whizzed around them.
Their task was hampered by the fact that 2 inches of water had inundated much of the school when fire sprinklers were activated by bombs that went off during the four-hour attack.
Nearly 48 hours after the shooting began, police found a homemade pipe bomb in a duffel bag that was strapped with masking tape to a pair of 20-pound propane tanks similar to those used in home barbecues. The device had been taped with nails and BBs, to create shrapnel, according to Sgt. Jim Parr of the sheriff’s department.
The discovery heightened suspicions that Harris and Klebold might have had help in planting such a large and bulky arsenal around the school.
“I don’t know how they could have brought these things in there (alone),” said Stone.
Anyone found to have had a role in planning the attack or who might have had prior knowledge could be charged with first-degree murder, Stone said. But Steve Davis, a sheriff’s department spokesman, said police have no one in custody or any identified suspects.
Another sheriff’s spokesman said some 20 to 30 investigators were interviewing students at their homes and at the Police Department to develop leads on possible accomplices.
Harris and Klebold reportedly were members of a small group of social outcasts at the school who dressed in black trench coats and called themselves the “Trench Coat Mafia.” The group had several run-ins with popular sports stars at the school, and witnesses to the assault said the gunmen appeared to be hunting for athletes.
There appeared to be chilling similarities between what actually happened Tuesday and the plot of the video that Harris, Klebold and some friends shot for a class project last fall.
Garrett Talocco, the teacher who taught the class, declined comment, as did Kay Pride, a school district spokeswoman.
Authorities on Thursday confirmed that a note written by either Harris or Klebold had been found in one of their homes, but would not say which. CNN, citing two unnamed sources, termed the letter a “final note” and quoted it as reading: “Don’t blame us for this. This is the way we want to go out.”
Officials have said Columbine probably will remain closed through the end of the school year, but elsewhere in this shattered middle-class suburb there was an attempt to return to at least a small measure of normality.
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Proms and graduations will go on as scheduled at area schools, officials announced. Students returned to classes Thursday at Chatfield High School, but the Columbine bloodbath haunted the halls as armed guards were posted inside the school and students cried and hugged inside.
At one point, two bomb-squad trucks sped to the school after a backpack scare. Dozens of students streamed out of the school hours early, unable to stand the tension.
“It’s like a prison in there,” said Jessica Miller, 15.
“You can’t even go to the bathroom without permission, and then they time you,” said Holly Bernside, also 15. “All the teachers are wearing name tags, and there is one at every door.”
There were scares at other schools as well, in Colorado and across the nation.
In Colorado Springs, four teens were arrested after they showed up at a high school wearing black trench coats and black masks similar to those Harris and Klebold wore during the rampage. Since Tuesday, school districts in Denver and two other Colorado communities have barred students from wearing trench coats to school.
In Ohio, a 13-year-old boy was taken into custody Wednesday after he said he was going “to come into the school with a gun and kill all of the people that he didn’t like,” said Police Chief Scott Ballentine in Tuscarawas, 90 miles east of Columbus.
Police in downstate Christopher, Ill., on Thursday charged three 16-year-old boys with unlawful use of a weapon after they were caught with bombmaking materials Wednesday.
The boys were arrested as they exploded homemade bombs in a field near the local high school. But Franklin County Sheriff Bill Wilson said there was no indication the teens intended to do anything more harmful than possibly blow up mailboxes.
“The ironic thing is they hadn’t heard about (Colorado),” Wilson said. “They were too busy making and exploding bombs to even watch TV.”
The Littleton shootings seemed to alter, at least in the short term, the national debate over gun control. Colorado lawmakers abandoned several bills long advocated by the gun lobby while Denver Mayor Wellington Webb asked the National Rifle Association to cancel its national convention, scheduled for Denver next week. NRA officials said the meeting, though scaled back, would be held.
In California, the Assembly unexpectedly voted to approve a bill intended to curb handgun trafficking, while the Florida House unexpectedly tabled a measure designed to prevent municipalities from suing gunmakers, as Chicago has already done. In Arizona, Gov. Jane Hull vetoed similar legislation.
“What we are seeing out of this tragedy is that legislators are listening to their constituents, and not the NRA,” said Joe Sudbay, state legislative director for Handgun Control Inc., a Washington-based group.
Noting that his office has deployed eight people to help its lone receptionist field a deluge of calls after the Littleton shootings, Sudbay said, “Around the country, the same thing is happening–people are just fed up.”
Dramatic shooting incidents in the past have led to an upsurge in anti-gun sentimentbut they have done little to blunt the power and money of the gun lobby.
The first of the funerals for the Columbine victims was scheduled for Saturday. A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore said that Gore and his wife, Tipper, would attend a memorial service for the victims in Littleton on Sunday.
President Clinton, who had weighed making his own pilgrimage to Littleton, instead went to culturally diverse T.C. Williams High School in suburban Virginia on Thursday to spotlight constructive solutions to school violence.
In a town-hall-style meeting, the president sat in the middle of two rows of students and teachers seated in chairs, asking them questions about a highly touted conflict-resolution program at the school.
Noting that it was too early to draw many conclusions from the Colorado killings, the president said it appeared that the teens responsible for the rampage felt they were the objects of ridicule and ostracism, and who reacted in part because of a need to “look down” on someone else.
“They had the wrong reaction to being `dissed,’ ” Clinton said. “Everybody gets dissed at some time . . . even the president.”
Clinton said the killings should prompt a debate about the responsibilities of students, schools, parents and the larger role of cultural forces such as the use of media, including the Internet, to promote violence and hate.
“We do have more violence among younger people than other cultures do,” Clinton said. “. . . All of you are exposed to much higher levels of violence through television, through video games. . . . You can actually find out how to make bombs on the Internet. Does that make a difference? Does it make these things more likely to happen?”