Columbine Essay, Research Paper

Columbine

By: Vantiago

E-mail: [email protected]

The tragedy at Columbine High School is something that will be remembered and talked about for many years to come. People from across the nation have all heard about this event. But there are still a couple questions that people have. For instance who’s to blame? The kids alone, the parents for how they brought the children up, or even actually the students at Columbine? Most say that the parents are to blame, but who actually knows? In my opinion the only two people that can actually answer this question truthfully are both dead. Everyone wants answers. Did the kids have help? Who was it? Who sold them the weapons and why? Why did they do this? How could they do this? I had a class about the last question. Who could actually go into a room and commit a crime of massacre in a school of people that you know and have grown up with? Most of our class thought that they couldn’t ever get enough anger to do anything even remotely as bad, but when you actually think about it, if you had no friends and where made fun of all the time. It looked like your parents, teachers, and even all your own piers where against you. I think anyone could snap and maybe even do something as drastic as this (Why at Columbine High). Did the boys, Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, have any help doing this crime. As of yet no one has true evidence that proves they did except they did find who sold them the weapons. Police found around thirty small bombs and one twenty-pound propane bomb in the school, enough explosives to blow the school into almost nothing. For this reason people believe that the boys either had to have help or they had visited the school many times to plan this assault. No one talking though and no proof has been found. Their not only looking for information from someone that could point to someone that had helped they’re also looking for someone that had known that this was going to happen, so that they may find the answers to so many questions (The Colorado Shooting: Who Helped). Besides many bombs the police had also found a horrible suicide note. “Your children who have ridiculed me, who have chosen not to accept me, who have treated me like I am not worth their time are dead. THEY ARE (expletive) DEAD. I may have taken their lives and my own – but it was your doing. Teachers, parents, LET THIS MASSACRE BE ON YOUR SHOULDERS UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE.” Those lines from the note have to be the worst thing I’ve read in my life. It’s almost as if they are completely happy with doing this, and they think that they’re doing for the good of the people. The letter goes on to say, “You may think the horror ends with the bullet in my head, but you wouldn’t be so lucky. All that I can leave you with to decipher what more extensive death is to come is ‘12Skizto.’ You have until April 26th. Goodbye.” This is something that I’ve only read in this one place ‘12Skizto’ what could it mean? So far course they believe it had something to do with the bombs they found in the school, but who actually knows? The way they word everything is so sad. It’s sad because just by reading these pieces of the note you know they must have had so much hatred towards their parents, teachers, piers, and even the parents of their piers (Police Discover Possible Suicide Note). Another tragic event that happened out of all this is the martyr Cassie Bernall’s death. This girl stood up and said, “There is a God, and you need to follow along God’s path.” And because of that simple statement that she said directly to the boys they shot her dead. What a brave little girl, giving up her life in hope that maybe just maybe the boys may stop. Unfortunately it had no effect. And now the death of Cassie Bernall will stay with everyone as the martyr of the Littleton tragedy (A Surge of Teen Spirit). Even at six months after the horrible tragedy more tragedy is happening. October 23, 1999, the mother, Carla June Hochhalter, of Anne Marie Hochhalter, one of the critically injured children from the Columbine Tragedy shot herself, because of all the stress this has put her through. Since their daughter was paralyzed they had to have money to keep her in the hospital, so they had to sell their house and live in motels and such. Harriet Hall, the psychologist in charge of counseling the Columbine victims, said that Mrs. Hochhalter had been making progress, but that things like this don’t usually take full effect on someone till about six months. It takes till about then to actually realized that the person is gone. Yet one more death to add to the twelve students and teachers killed and twenty-six injured during the Columbine Tragedy, will it ever stop? (Mother of Injured Girl Commits Suicide). Schools around the nation were threatened with phone calls and letters about this event as if they wanted to copycat the tragedy. So far Jeffco, Colorado has had four letters stating that they would have the same thing done to their school. Most schools aren’t worried they believe that the kids believe they will get a day or two out of school, because of it, but since Jeffco has had four and it’s so close Littleton their not sure what to do (4 threatening letters to Jeffco schools probed). A total of 18 families by October 19 had already filed civil cases against the county sheriff, the school district, or both for amounts of one hundred thousand dollars to anywhere up to ten million dollars. One of the cases is coming from the parents of Dylan Klebold towards the county sheriff for not telling them about all the violence Eric Harris had done in his life. The Klebold’s stated that if they would have been told of Harris’s behavior that they would have never even let Dylan be around him. The parents of Isaiah Shoels, one of the kids that were shot during the massacre, are suing both the Klebold’s and Harris’s parents, and the person who sold them the weapons. The Shoels announced they wanted to sue for two hundred fifty million dollars, but unfortunately, for the Shoels, the state cap for a wrongful death claim is two hundred fifty thousand dollars (18 Columbine Families File Lawsuit Notices). After six weeks of no one except investigators and policemen in the school the police finally let them in. Everyone had something to get or look at, since the kids all had to leave their book bags in the school. A lot of the kids despised having to go back to school where many of their friends were killed or even injured (A Sad Homecoming at Columbine High). As of now in the little town of Littleton, the people are decided rather or not to destroy the old library and build a new one, for over three million dollars. They see the library as a horrible memory since ten of the students were killed and that’s where the boys committed suicide (Library Approval Delayed). This entire event got worse and worse as I read into it. Before now I never knew what was written in the suicide notes that they had written, but now that I do it’s really unbelievable that a human could think up such a thing and actually do it. It’s one thing to think about doing it, but strictly another going through with something so gruesome. I believe all of us feel left out sometimes, or maybe just seeing everything go wrong from them and that everyone’s against them, but I don’t see it in anyone to take that hated to these extremes.

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