On April 20, 1999, two Columbine High School students opened fire on their classmates and teachers in Littleton, Colorado. By the time the attack ended, 13 people were dead, dozens more were injured, and the two perpetrators — Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold — were dead by their own hands in the school library. The event became one of the deadliest school shootings in American history and triggered years of investigation into who these two young men were and what drove them to carry out the attack.
Eric Harris was born on April 9, 1981, in Wichita, Kansas. His family relocated to Littleton, Colorado, in 1993, where he eventually enrolled at Columbine High School. Dylan Klebold was born on September 11, 1981, in Lakewood, Colorado, and grew up in a middle-class household in the same Littleton community. The two crossed paths at Columbine and formed a friendship that would, over time, become the center of one of the most meticulously planned attacks on an American school ever recorded.
Harris and Klebold spent more than a year preparing for the shooting. During that time, they acquired firearms, built pipe bombs, and practiced elements of their plan. They documented much of their preparation and their thoughts in journals, videos, and recordings that investigators later recovered. Their planning was deliberate and extensive, far beyond what most people imagined two teenagers were capable of organizing.
On the morning of the attack, Harris and Klebold arrived at Columbine armed with two shotguns, a semi-automatic carbine, a 9mm handgun, and a large number of homemade explosive devices. Before the shooting began, they placed propane tank bombs in the school cafeteria, set to detonate during the lunch hour when the room would be packed with students. The bombs failed to detonate as intended. Had they worked, the death toll would have been far higher. With the bombs failing, Harris and Klebold moved forward with the shooting portion of their plan, opening fire outside the school before pushing inside.
Inside the building, they moved through hallways and rooms, firing at students and staff. Their path eventually led them to the school library, which became the site of the greatest loss of life during the attack. Ten of the thirteen victims who died that day were killed in the library. Harris and Klebold spent roughly eight minutes there, shooting students who had hidden under tables before they left the room and continued moving through the building.
After leaving the library, Harris and Klebold wandered the school for a period before returning to the library. By this point, law enforcement had surrounded the building and SWAT teams were working to enter. Inside the library, with police closing in, the two chose to end their own lives. Harris died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Klebold also shot himself in the head. They died next to each other on the library floor, approximately 49 minutes after the attack had begun.
Law enforcement officers discovered the bodies of Harris and Klebold several hours after the shooting ended. Clearing a school of that size while checking for explosive devices was a slow and dangerous process, and authorities could not enter every area of the building immediately. When they finally reached the library, they found the two perpetrators lying on the floor, dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, surrounded by the devastation they had created. The bodies of victims were found throughout the school — in the library, the cafeteria, the hallways, and outside the building.
Following the shooting, the bodies of Harris and Klebold were transported to a local hospital, where autopsies were conducted. Authorities officially listed the cause of death for both as self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Their bodies were subsequently released to their families for burial. The families of both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold largely withdrew from public life in the years that followed.
Investigators spent years analyzing every piece of evidence left behind — the journals, the home videos Harris and Klebold recorded before the attack, their school records, and accounts from people who knew them. The evidence painted a picture of two young men who had planned a mass killing event with great care. Harris’s writings revealed deep contempt for other people and a desire to cause widespread destruction. Klebold’s journals reflected intense depression and a preoccupation with his own death. While both were involved in the same attack, their documented psychological states pointed in different directions.
Debates over their motivations surfaced quickly after the shooting. Some pointed to bullying and social rejection as contributing factors, though investigators found that Harris and Klebold were not as isolated as early reports suggested. Others pointed to the role of violent media or the accessibility of firearms. The guns used in the attack were purchased through a straw buyer at gun shows and from a licensed dealer. All four firearms were obtained by people legally, then passed to Harris and Klebold — a detail that directly fed into national debates about gun show sales and background check requirements.
April 20, 1999, left a mark on how schools, law enforcement agencies, and communities approach safety planning. In the weeks and months after the shooting, Columbine High School itself became both a crime scene and a symbol. Students returned to the building in August 1999 after extensive repairs and modifications. The library where Harris, Klebold, and their victims were found was demolished and replaced with a new atrium as part of the rebuilding process.
