Columbine reports
There were many warning signs that something wasn't right in Dylan and Eric's world; several people saw those signs and yet nothing prevented the bloody events of 4-20-1999. Perhaps it was too easy for most people to dismiss what they saw. After all it was the boys' last year of school and they were smart guys. They were two weeks away from graduation, even. Surely if they were going to make mischief, they wouldn't wait till they were at the brink of freedom from the school they hated so much to do something to it. Right? Wrong. For whatever reason, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided it was more important to blow up their school and broadcast their rage-fueled message than it was to migrate to the next phase of life.

Situations like this want for a "trigger event" - something that set the killers off, some final event that was the last straw, so to speak. Though no one isolated event has been agreed upon by those who study this event, several potentially influential factors have surfaced over the years. For instance, Eric Harris had been diagnosed with anger manangement problems previously and had been taking Luvox® (Fluvoxamine maleate) and attending anger management sessions. Despite drugs and counseling he still had enough venom in him to write several hateful webpages, one of them directed at friend Brooks Brown during a falling-out. He penned even more violent and angry words in his notebooks and journals, as did Dylan. Dylan's creative writing subject choices got so gory and disturbing at one point his teacher wouldn't even gradeone assignment till she met with him to discuss it. She even talked with his parents about it but Dylan dismissed it as being 'just a story'.

Over the years that they knew each other the boys were known to have caused all sorts of mischief together, including booby trapping the fence behind the Blackjack Pizza where they worked, to ward off other teens who used a hole in the fence as a shortcut. They set off pipe bombs at work and even lit a fire in the sink, resulting in Dylan's temporary suspension. He was hired back when the place needed help.

The gunmen made several video tapes that spelled out just how unhappy and violent they were feeling but these weren't discovered till after everyone was already dead; not because they were hidden but because the the boys' rooms weren't explored till then. The barrel of one of the sawed-off shotguns was sitting on Dylan's dresser in plain sight when investigators went into his room. Eric and Dylan gloated on their 'Basement Tapes' that they had been caught with bombs by their parents and nearly caught with their weapons - many instances where they thought their 'plan' was done for. Yet time and again they were allowed to slip right off the hook, so often that they congratulated themselves on their tapes for being so clever.

A lot of things contributed to what happened but it can't be said that no one knew the boys were having problems. Eric's own father, Wayne Harris, kept a diary detailing the many times Eric had gotten into trouble with the law and with classmates (viewable in the Columbine Documents). Below are scans of several reports filed over the years leading up to the shootings. The top links lead to the most recent reports that have been released, investigative reports having to do directly with the Columbine massacre.

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