At Least 15 Dead In Colorado High School Shooting
LITTLETON, Colo. (Reuters) - Bomb squads combed a Colorado high school Wednesday for booby-trap explosives left by two heavily armed teen-agers who went on a bloody rampage, killing at least 15 people including themselves.
Police said the youths, dressed in black trench coats and ski masks, sprayed gunfire at students around lunchtime Tuesday before committing suicide.
The pair scattered more than a dozen homemade bombs with timers in and around at Columbine High School in the Denver suburb of Littleton Tuesday. Police said 15 to 16 people died and 20 were critically injured in the shooting spree.
Previously at least 20 people and perhaps as many as 25 were believed killed in the attack, which was by far the worst in a spate of school shootings that have shocked Americans over the past 18 months. It was also one of the bloodiest mass shootings of any kind in a country where gun control efforts have been hotly debated.
Investigators were hampered in determining the exact death toll in large part because police wanted bomb teams to sweep the school for explosives before they made a detailed search.
Jefferson County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Davis told reporters early Wednesday that the death toll was ``either 15 or 16 at this point.''
Among the dead were 12 students 9 boys and 3 girls -- discovered in the school library, and this included the two gunmen. The body of one adult man, presumed to be a faculty member, was found outside the library, Davis said.
Investigators working in darkness were confused whether two or three bodies were outside the school, leading to continued uncertainty over the number of dead, he said.
The bodies were unlikely to be removed from the school before midday because investigators needed more time to collect evidence and document the crime scene, Davis said.
Bomb squads would need several days to complete searching the school for explosives, he said.
The danger of the booby traps was brought home when one previously undiscovered device exploded late Tuesday hours after the slayings Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone said. ''The problem is we don't want to have one go off that we've overlooked,'' Stone told KUSA-TV in Denver.
The homemade devices included highly lethal pipe bombs, propane-fueled shrapnel explosives and plastic containers filled with gasoline and soap, Stone said. Some were found near the bodies of the two suspects and others elsewhere in the school and in cars in its parking lot.
Sheriff's Department spokesman Davis said police had not determined a motive for the attack but had heard speculation it might be connected to Adolf Hitler's birthday.
Many stunned students, parents and residents of Littleton, an affluent community of 65,000, attended a memorial service Tuesday night, and school officials were arranging crisis counseling for teens struggling to cope with the massacre.
The gunmen were identified as members of an outcast group at the school called the ``Trench Coat Mafia'' that The Denver Post said consisted of about a dozen juniors and seniors who wore swastikas on their clothes and liked to discuss Hitler whose birthday was April 20.
``They talk about Hitler a lot. They take a real pride in him. It's creepy,'' a female senior told the paper.
Fellow students identified the dead suspects as seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, both 18. Acquaintances said the two were unpopular and talked a lot about guns and violence.
Police obtained warrants to search the pair's homes and were reported to have found bomb-making materials at one.
Devon Adams, 16, said Harris had ``changed recently'' and ''gotten mean.'' She also said that Klebold was ``different.''
Many witnesses said the gunmen appeared to have two particular targets: minority students and popular athletes.
One female student, her arms spattered with the blood of fellow students, sobbed as she told KMGH television: ``He was shooting people right in front of me. He was shooting people of color and people who play sports. He put the gun right in my face and started laughing....''
President Clinton deplored the slaying and said the federal government would provide any help needed to deal with the tragedy. ``Perhaps now America would wake up to the challenge'' facing young people in the school, he said.
Before Tuesday, the worst school shooting in the United States took place in March 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, when two boys, aged 11 and 13, shot and killed a teacher and four girls. That was one of a series of incidents at U.S. schools in which at least 14 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in less than two years.