Columbine High School

Laughing as they killed, two youths clad in dark ski masks and long black coats fired handguns at will and blithely tossed pipe bombs into a crowd of their terrified classmates Tuesday inside a suburban high school southwest of Denver, littering halls with as many as 23 bodies and wounding at least 25 others.

SAN DIEGO - The gunman stalked the dormitory halls yelling "I'm going to kill somebody," pounding and kicking on doors, and firing his weapon in the air. The resident assistants remembered their training: turn off the lights, barricade the doors with chairs and tables, lie flat on the floor, push back if the killer tries to bust in, or jump out a window if it isn't too high. The drama was all staged but with a life-saving purpose Tuesday as a dormitory at San Diego State became a stand-in for Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary and the engineering building on the campus here - all scenes of deadly rampages.

After the ribbons fade, after the dead are laid to rest, after the reporters drift away, the last casualty of the massacre at Columbine High School may turn out to be the idea of public school. Public school. We used to know what that concept meant. Earlier generations understood, in a nation as individualized as ours, that we needed an institution, a school, where children would learn to regard themselves as people in common. After Littleton, Colo., who wonders about Yugoslavia?

Breaking a weeklong silence after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Wayne LaPierre was unapologetic and unambiguous as he stood before a pack of reporters and a phalanx of cameras. "I call on Congress today to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school - and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January," LaPierre, the vice president of the National Rifle Assn., said.

Like many mental health providers around the country, counselors here feared that in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings, those needing help would either be too traumatized or too stigmatized to ask for it. As exhausted counselors in the region can attest, nothing could be further from the truth.

Re: the tragedy at Columbine High School: The line between movies, TV and reality is blurring. GERALDINE FORER SPAGNOLI Calabasas

A special address has been designated for cards and letters to Columbine High School students, family and staff: Messages for Columbine, Communications Services, Jefferson County Public Schools, P.O. Box 4001, Golden, CO 80401-0001.

A Columbine High School basketball star who witnessed last year's shooting rampage--losing one of his best friends--hanged himself in his garage as a CD, set to replay continuously, blared a song with the words: "I'm too depressed to go on." It was the second suicide among friends or relatives of the Columbine High victims, shocking the community two weeks after the first anniversary of the massacre. Greg Barnes, a 17-year-old who averaged 26.

President Clinton will visit Colorado on the eve of the first anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings to promote a state ballot initiative that would require background checks for firearm purchases at gun shows, a senior White House official said. White House Chief of Staff John Podesta said the trip also would attempt to increase pressure on Congress.

The U.S. Postal Service has established a special national mailing address for people wishing to support those involved with the Columbine High School tragedy in Littleton, Colo. Mail should be addressed to: Messages for Columbine, Communication Services, Jefferson County Public Schools, P.O. Box 4001, Golden, CO 80401-0001.

It was the Connecticut school massacre that never happened. A 16-year-old junior was stockpiling guns in his bedroom closet for an attack on April 10, 2007. In a red folder on his nightstand, he kept a map of his high school in the town of Newington, a hit list of more than 20 classmates, a timeline of a killing plan that ended with his own suicide, and photos of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris of Columbine infamy. But Frank Fechteler never had the chance to carry out his plot; a girl had caught word of the planned attack and told her parents and the police.

When it comes to events like the recent school shooting in Newtown, Conn., there are knowns, unknowns and, already, mis-knowns. A photograph of Ryan Lanza circulated asserting he was the shooter, when in fact it was his brother, Adam Lanza. Their mother, Nancy Lanza, whom Adam killed, was reported to have been a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, where the other shootings took place -- but she was not. The story of what happened Friday when 20 children and seven adults were killed has been written and rewritten, and it probably will be rewritten again.

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. - In a new book, the mother of one of the Columbine High School killers admitted that on that terrible morning, as she realized her son was involved, she prayed he would not emerge alive. “I had a sudden vision of what he might be doing. And so while every other mother in Littleton was praying that her child was safe, I had to pray that mine would die before he hurt anyone else,” Sue Klebold told author Andrew Solomon, whose book, “Far From The Tree,” explores the family life of atypical children, including those who commit crimes.

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. - In the hot midday sun, two women stood alone at the simple stone memorial honoring those lost just across the field at Columbine High School 13 long years ago. Cyd Ovens read the inscriptions honoring the 12 students and one teacher slain, and began to shake, tears stinging her eyes. In the five years since the memorial opened, the 58-year-old from nearby Lakewood had never visited. But on Saturday, a day after learning of the movie theater massacre 20 miles away in Aurora, she felt drawn to it. "I'm just so heartsick," she said.

The movie theater massacre that took place in Aurora, Colo., early Friday morning unfolded about 15 miles from the scene of the Columbine High School shootings. Residents of Littleton, Colo., who lived through that 1999 rampage were badly shaken Friday morning by news of the latest bloodshed. The shooting at a midnight screening of the new Batman film,"The Dark Knight Rises," killed 12 people and injured at least 50. The Columbine shooting killed 12 students and 1 teacher; the two gunmen took their own lives as well.

One student was killed and four were injured in a shooting Monday morning at a high school in suburban Chardon, Ohio, authorities have reported. A suspect was taken into custody, but his name was being withheld because he's a juvenile, said Chardon Police Chief Timothy McKenna. The suspect, who is believed to be a student at the school, has yet to be charged, the chief said. McKenna announced the death and injuries in a televised briefing. The injured students were hospitalized, McKenna said, but he gave no additional details on their conditions.

The weapons used in the Columbine High School shooting included a semiautomatic handgun, a rifle and two sawed-off shotguns. The Intratec AB-10 handgun is popular among ciminals. From 1989 o 1993, it ranked in the top 10 firearms traced by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in connection with crimes.

Three teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill a "hit list" of high school classmates on today's one-year anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. Police said Wednesday that three 15-year-olds, two boys and a girl, were taken into custody after the discovery Tuesday of threatening graffiti and the list of names at Encinal High School in Alameda, just south of Oakland.

Johnny Lee remembers hearing gunshots at Columbine High School as he hid in his middle school across the street. Andrea Colburn had transferred out of Columbine shortly before the shooting. On Monday, they joined about 1,000 others in Littleton, a Denver suburb, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the worst high school shooting in American history. Twelve students and one teacher were killed by two teenage gunmen on April 20, 1999. After a four-hour siege, the pair took their own lives.

Hundreds attended a sunset candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the Columbine High School massacre on the eve of its 10th anniversary. A steady stream of visitors walked slowly around the Columbine Memorial in a park next to the school in Denver's southern suburbs. The high school will be closed today, the anniversary of the attack. Two students opened fire on April 20, 1999, killing 12 students and a teacher and wounding two dozen others before killing themselves.