PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2003.10.23
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A8
BYLINE: Jennifer Morrison
SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen; with files from CanWest News Service
ILLUSTRATION: Photo: The Associated Press / Columbine gunman Eric Harrisis
shown firing a pistol in this frame grab of a videotape released yesterday
by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. Authorities say the tape was
made six weeks before Mr. Harris's and Dylan Klebold's attack at Columbine
High School.; Photo: The Associated Press / Columbine gunman Dylan Klebold
is shown firing a sawed-off shotgun in this videotape image. Also shown on
the video were two men who were convicted of providing the teens guns.
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Chilling video shows killers firing guns: Columbine gunmen laughed as they hit targets, tape shows
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More than four years after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on their
Columbine classmates, killing 12 and one teacher, authorities have released
a chilling videotape made six weeks before the massacre of the pair laughing
and shooting at targets in a snowy Colorado forest.
The 15-minute tape of Mr. Harris, 18, and Mr. Klebold, 17, who committed
suicide after the rampage on April 20, 1999, shows them with two other men
and a woman firing round after round at pine trees and bowling pins, while
wondering aloud what it would be like if the targets were real people.
"Imagine that in someone's (expletive) brain," Mr. Harris says in the video.
Clad in a trench coat, Mr. Klebold at one point holds a sawed-off shotgun
and shoots from the hip at a bowling pin wedged between two tree limbs. He
and Mr. Harris then look at a bullet-shredded tree trunk. The shaky video
shows at least four weapons, including automatic rifles, a sawed-off shotgun
and a pistol.
Among other scenes, the video shows a giddy Mr. Harris blowing across the upturned muzzle of a shotgun like a gunslinger.
"Guns are bad. When you saw them off and make them illegal, bad things happen to you," someone says.
The homemade tape, filmed on a snow-covered hillside in Douglas Country,
Colorado, south of Denver, was released at the urging of the Jefferson County
sheriff's office and a task force established by the attorney general's office,
both of which want to make evidence in the case public.
Randy Brown, a member of the task force, said he and his wife warned sheriff's
deputies more than a year before the shootings that Mr. Harris had threatened
to kill one of their sons.
"The videotape is important," Mr. Brown said. "What's really important is
did the sheriff see it, did the school see it, or did the parents see it?
How many opportunities were missed to stop these two killers?"
Mr. Brown's son, one of Mr. Klebold's friends, told Fox News that others
had told him that Mr. Klebold's video class had been shown the video before
the massacre.
More than 100 copies of the tape were made and can be purchased from the
Jefferson County's sheriff's office at a cost of $20 U.S.
The sheriff's office is not profiting from the sale of the tape, confirmed
public information co-ordinator Jacki Tallman, who said all the costs are
related to the administration of the tape.
"Absolutely not," she said. "I know some people today have questioned that
sort of cost, but we have never made a profit off of Columbine."
As a standard operating procedure, the sheriff's office is recording the
name of anyone who purchases the tape, or makes a request for Columbine materials.
So far, almost all requests have been from media organizations.
Also on the tape are Philip Duran and Marc Manes, who were in their 20s at
the time of the shootings. Both men were charged with providing Mr. Klebold
and Mr. Harris with their weapons.
In a videotaped message before the Columbine attack, Mr. Harris and Mr. Klebold
thanked Mr. Manes for providing the gun -- a TEC-DC9 semi-automatic handgun
they purchased for $500 about three months before the massacre -- saying
they couldn't have done it without his help.
Mr. Duran was sentenced in June 2000 to four-and-a-half years in prison;
Mr. Manes, who is shown shooting some of the weapons in the video, was sentenced
in 1999 to six years in prison. He was released to a halfway house after
less than two years.
Just like the release of other Columbine-related material, Ms. Tallman said
the sheriff's office is always worried about the impact it might have.
"Every time that we are forced to release things we are always mindful,"
she said. "Our fear will always be that the information that has been released
and that probably will be released, including this tape, will be on the shelf
of the next killer."
This is not the first Columbine tape to be released.
The sheriff's office earlier released surveillance video showing the teenagers
as they entered the high school cafeteria during their rampage, but this
is the first tape made by the gunmen themselves to be released to the public.