Add Category
Posted
Stalking the hallways of an elementary school hallway in Denver's suburbs, a masked SWAT team has cautiously entered the cafeteria.
"Threat in the doorway! Show me your hands!" one officer yelled into the darkness.
On that day, the "bad guy" was a life-size cardboard cut-out of a menacing figure pointing a handgun, but they were training for the day he is real — part of the Columbine legacy.
Last year the shuttered elementary school reopened as the Frank DeAngelis Centre, named after the man who was the principal of Columbine High School in 1999 when two armed students stalked the campus, killing 12 of their peers and a much-loved gym coach.
"As I ran out of my office my worst nightmare became a reality because I came through the office doors and looking down, probably about 75 yards, was a gunman pointing a long gun at me" Mr DeAngelis recalled.
There had been school shootings in America before Columbine — Jonesboro, West Paducah, Springfield — but none played out on live television like Columbine did.
Many lessons were learned after Columbine: in Colorado police no longer have to wait for SWAT teams to arrive before entering a building where a gunman may be inside, students across America now regularly have active shooter drills.
"We've found really good ways to react, we've done nothing about prevention," Paula Reed, an English teacher who survived Columbine and still works at the school, said.
In the nearly two decades since the attack, she and Mr DeAngelis have been an invaluable source of support for teachers, students, parents who have lived through other school shootings.
'We've done nothing about prevention'
When last month's attack in Parkland, Florida, happened Mr DeAngelis and Ms Reed were already counselling teachers in Marshall County, Kentucky, where in January a 15-year-old student with a handgun fatally shot two students and left 18 injured.
"How did we get here? This is normal," Ms Reed said.
"We are never going to regain our innocence. But how do we at least regain our indignation?"
In the years after the shooting Ms Reed hit some very low points.
"Honestly, the days and weeks after are not the hardest part because you are in shock.
"It really didn't hit me how bad I was until the third year out and I started to break out in hives when I walked into the school building, my hair started to fall out," she said.
After the last of the Columbine students survivors graduated she took two years off and wrote romance novels and came back "in better shape" but admits she still feels the effects.
Redefining 'normal' after shootings
After learning of the death toll in Florida school shooting Mrs Reed said she "lost it", and called in a substitute teacher for the next day.
The advice she and Mr DeAngelis gave survivors were similar: take it slow, be patient with one another and stick together.
Their school tried to take steps to make it easier on the students when they returned — they changed the sound of the fire alarm that had provided a screeching soundtrack throughout the attack.
Teachers left doors open so they would not mimic gunfire if they slammed loudly.
Chinese food was removed from the cafeteria menu for fear the smell would trigger memories of the meal many students left behind when the gunman entered the dining hall. But it is never enough.
"People asked 'when is it going to back to normal?'" Mr DeAngelis said. "It [will] not."
"We had to redefine what normal is and what it will be … It's a marathon not a sprint."
Columbine survivors disagree on the solution
On the wall of Congressman Patrick Neville's office in Colorado's State Capitol hang sketches of his three young daughters — on the opposite wall are his Iraq war medals.
As a 15-year-old student he survived the Columbine attack but one of his closest friends was killed — it was a wake up call for him
His friend was a straight A student, while Mr Neville described himself at the time as a student who “wasn't heading down a very productive path to lead a very productive life".
Motivated to not waste a life that had been spared he went to college, joined the military and in 2014, and was elected as a Republican to the State House.
In the four years since he has tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation making it easier for licensed adults to carry guns on school properties.
"I was freaked out the next day after the Parkland [Florida] shooting dropping my own kids off knowing that I leave them totally defenceless," he said.
On the gun control debate, Mr Neville pointed out that the Columbine shooting happened amidst Bill Clinton's assault weapons ban, and that the attackers had intended to blow up the cafeteria with a propane bomb.
"We can't ban propane tanks and those kinds of things but what we can do is actually let good people defend students," he said.
Ms Reed was not clear on exactly what she wanted in terms of gun control but for her arming teachers was not the answer.
"Cops are taught to think of the gunman, the perpetrator.
"I understand teachers don't want to be unarmed, I want to be able to protect my kids, but I think really, really could you without hesitation shoot one of your students? That is a lot to ask.
"I would rather we didn't even need to be having that conversation … To me it is how do we keep guns out of the hands of kids so they are not bringing them into schools," she said.
'And they shot and killed..And they shot and killed.'
For Craig Scott, the solution is not political, but emotional — his story of surviving Columbine is one of the most horrific.
Mr Scott was a 16 year old student in the library doing homework with friends when a teacher ran in and told them to hide under their desks.
The gunmen came over and singled out his friend, Isaiah Shoels, one of the school's few black students.
"The last thing that he said was 'I wanna see my mom'," Mr Scott said.
"And they shot and killed him. And they shot and killed my friend Matt. And they left me underneath that table," he said, recounting a story he has told thousands of times.
It was only later that he learned his 17 year old sister, Rachel, was the first person the gunmen killed as she sat on the school lawn eating lunch.
It took a trip to Africa and a chance meeting with a man who had lost 17 members of his family during apartheid to release the anger he had towards the shooters.
Mr Scott and his family have since started a charity called 'Rachel's Challenge' which works to reduce violence in schools across the world. He has been trying to counter what he sees as teenagers being desensitised to violence.
"My work has been to raise the value of human life in their eyes," he said.
He recalled how after a speaking event at a Texas school a student handed him a "hit list", and told him his words had just stopped a massacre.
"I think they can make laws but it doesn't change people's hearts," Mr Scott said.
'Can they hold out that long?'
Mr Scott cautioned the survivors of the Florida school shooting, whose activism has reignited a national debate about gun control.
"I'm not against the things that the [Florida] students are being very vocal about, I just know as a teenager you don't have all the answers," Mr Scott said.
For Ms Reed and Mr DeAngelis, the Florida students are a source of hope and inspiration.
There is a sense of optimism Florida may become what the Columbine did not: America's last school shooting — though Ms Reed admitted her optimism is cautious.
"Do they know they are in for a long game?" she said of the Florida students.
"I think probably intellectually they do, emotionally is the trick — can you hold out that long?"
While the Columbine survivors could not agree on what the solution would look like, they keep trying to find one, all the while knowing the next Florida, or Columbine, is just waiting to happen.
Topics: world-politics, foreign-affairs, government-and-politics, law-crime-and-justice, united-states