Columbine

Kate Battan takes over as lead investigator at this point. While many students did not know the identity of the gunmen, Cullen reports that “quite a few had,” and by 1:15, detectives have arrived at the home of Eric Harris (68). Eric’s parents attempt to refuse the cops entry. The cops enter anyway and head to the basement, where Eric’s bedroom is located. Eric’s mom, Kathy, tells them she doesn’t want them down there. The cops smell gas and shut off utilities. They locate a page from The Anarchist Cookbook, the book in which Eric learned how to make the bombs. The Klebolds, by contrast, allow the cops in, and Dylan’s parents tell law enforcement all they can. They find pipe bombs in Dylan’s room.

FBI agent Dwayne Fuselier arrives at Columbine: “a veteran agent, a clinical psychologist, a terrorism expert, and one of the leading hostage negotiators in the country” (69). However, the reason he is there first is because his son attends Columbine High. Cullen writes, “Jeffco officials had labelled Columbine a hostage standoff. Dr. Fuselier considered the chances of that remote. What he was driving toward was much worse.” Here, Cullen provides background on the difference between hostage and nonhostage situations: “To the FBI, the nonhostage distinction is critical. The Bureau recommends radically different strategies in those cases—essentially, the opposite approach … the goal with hostages is to gradually lower expectations; in nonhostage crises, it’s to lower emotions” (70). Fuselier organizes a negotiation team.

Cullen spends the concluding part of the chapter introducing elements of conspiracy theory that would wrongly equate Eric and Dylan with the Trench Coat Mafia, a clique at Columbine. Cullen says, “In the first two hours, witnesses on CNN described the [Trench Coat Mafia] as Goths, gays, outcasts, and a street gang.” He adds, “None of [this] would prove to be true” (72). 

DeAngelis arrives in the same hallway as Dylan and Eric, but at its opposite end. Between him and the shooters are a group of students. DeAngelis rushes to save the group of students walking unsuspectedly toward Eric and Dylan. He moves the students toward the gym, which is locked, manages to get the door open, and gets the students inside. DeAngelis locks the students in a storage room and gets to an outside door, where he sees students and teachers fleeing. He then turns around and goes back inside. He brings more students to safety; the police disallow him from reentering the building again.

At around quarter to two, the cops announce they have three students in custody and believe the incident to be over, which will prove to be incorrect.

At 2:30, a police officer in a news helicopter spots shooting victim Patrick Ireland standing next to a shattered window in the school library. Hours before, Ireland had been hiding beneath a table with three other students. One of the other students, Makai, is shot, and when Ireland goes to help, Dylan sees Ireland and shoots him with his shotgun. Shotgun pellets and shrapnel hit Ireland’s scalp and one of the pellets “burrowed six inches through spongy brain matter, entering the scalp just above his hairline on the left, and lodging near the middle rear” (77).

Ireland blacks out, and when he comes to, both perception and motor function are impeded. Ireland is paralyzed on his right side. Makai and another student, Dan, try to drag Ireland from the room at a moment they deem safe, but both students have been shot and give up and flee.

Due to impaired brain function, and despite being “only two table lengths from the window” (78), it takes Ireland three hours to reach the point where those in the helicopter glimpse him. Ireland attempts to get out of the window but there is a ledge that is waist-high and instead of jumping, Ireland falls onto the top of a SWAT truck below. Officers manage to get him to the ground, and Ireland tries to flee, as he is impaired due to his injuries and unsure of what is happening. Ireland is taken to the hospital and, while he can understand what is being said, he struggles to speak. President Clinton talks on live TV and asks “all Americans to pray for students and teachers in [Columbine]” (80). More and more students are discovered and led to safety. 

Cullen asserts,“The Columbine crisis was never a hostage standoff. Eric and Dylan had no intentions of making demands. SWAT teams searched the building for over three hours, but the killers were lying dead the entire time. They had committed suicide in the library at 12:08, forty-nine minutes after beginning the attack. The killing and terror had been real. The standoff had not” (83).

SWAT finds the bodies of the shooters at approximately 3:15, in the school library: “It was horrible. The room was a shambles; blood spattered the furniture, and enormous pools soaked into the carpet … A lifeless boy still held a pencil” (83).

Detectives comb the area while lead investigator Battan performs interviews. She also discovers that Eric and Dylan had been arrested a year prior for breaking into a vehicle to steal electronics. Battan further discovers a complaint filed by the parents of Brooks Brown, the student that Eric tells to go home prior to the mass shooting. Eric had made “death threats toward Brooks,” and “ten pages of murderous rants from [Eric’s] website had been compiled” (85).

Cullen next describes Sheriff Stone addressing the media, saying that Stone “answered nearly every question directly, despite later evidence that he had little or no information … He winged it” (85). In doing so, Stone states the death count is nearly double what it actually is and allows for the possibility of a third shooter.

Meanwhile, Dave Sanders’s family tries to get word on him (he is the only adult fatality of the shooting and bleeds out in a room over the course of multiple hours). Cullen details the responses of Robyn Anderson, Zack Heckler, and Chris Morris to law enforcement. Morris tells police that he knows Eric and Dylan were looking for guns;he believes a former co-worker of Eric and Dylan, Phil Duran, assisted the two boys in purchasing firearms. We learn that at the Tanner Gun Show, in Denver, Robyn purchased three guns for Eric and Dylan using their money, as she is eighteen and the boys were still minors.

The chapter concludes with the Klebolds being told they must vacate their house, which is now a crime scene. 

Buses arrive at Leawood Elementary, one of the rendezvous points. Brian Rohrbough, Danny’s dad, waits, knowing that his son is dead. Misty Bernall, Cassie’s mother, is sure her daughter is alive. The district attorney, Dave Thomas, knows which students are dead but withholds this information from family members for the time being. Mr. D and others try to figure out if Dave Sanders is among the dead. 

The family of Dave Sanders discovers that Dave is one of the victims. Well into the evening, ATF agents continue to search for live explosives, while SWAT teams remain inside the school, searching for possible, additional active shooters. The bomb squad accidentally sets off a bomb around 10:30 p.m. The Bernalls, who live adjacent to the school, watch the school all night, knowing their daughter, Cassie, is somewhere inside it.