Columbine - 20 years later

Columbine honors 13 lost with community service, ceremony

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — Community members in suburban Denver marked the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting Saturday with a remembrance ceremony that celebrated the school’s survival and by volunteering at shelters, doing neighborhood cleanup projects and laying flowers and cards
 
FILE - In this April 21, 1999, file photo, from left, Rachel Ruth, Rhianna Cheek and Mandi Annibel, all 16-year-old sophomores at Heritage High School in Littleton, Colo., console each other during a vigil service to honor the victims of the shooting spree in Columbine High School in the southwest Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo. Twelve students and one teacher were killed in a murderous rampage at the school on April 20, 1999, by two students who killed themselves in the aftermath. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)

AP Was There: Shock, then terror as Columbine attack unfolds

 
Frank DeAngelis, back, greets well-wishers during a vigil at the memorial for the victims of the massacre at Columbine High School on the 20th anniversary of the attack Friday, April 19, 2019, in Littleton, Colo. DeAngelis was principal of the school at the time of the attack. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Safety fears disrupt schools amid Columbine anniversary

 
FILE - This combination of undated photos released by the Jefferson County, Colo., Sheriff's Office on Tuesday, April 16, 2019 shows Sol Pais. A Colorado undersheriff who led the search for the Florida teen whose actions prompted tightened security at Columbine High School says she likely killed herself on Monday evening, April 15, 2019, before police launched a massive manhunt. FBI officials were concerned that Pais, 18, planned an attack of her own because she was "infatuated" with the 1999 Columbine school shooting. Her body was found west of Denver on Wednesday. (Jefferson County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)

Undersheriff: Teen’s death likely preceded Colorado manhunt

 
FILE - In this April 21, 1999, file photo, from left, Rachel Ruth, Rhianna Cheek and Mandi Annibel, all 16-year-old sophomores at Heritage High School in Littleton, Colo., console each other during a vigil service to honor the victims of the shooting spree in Columbine High School in the southwest Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo. Twelve students and one teacher were killed in a murderous rampage at the school on April 20, 1999, by two students who killed themselves in the aftermath. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)

Journalist who covered Columbine reflects on lives unlived

 

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In this July 2018 photo made available by Adrianna Pete, she takes a photo with her friend Sol Pais in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Pais killed herself in Colorado on Wednesday, April 17, 2019. Authorities say she was obsessed with the Columbine High School shooting and may have planned to carry out her own attack on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the shooting. (Adrianna Pete via AP)

Columbine focuses on healing as questions loom after manhunt

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado community changed forever by the attack that killed 13 people at Columbine High School moved ahead Thursday with ceremonies marking the anniversary of the tragedy while awaiting more details on what led a Florida teen “infatuated” with the shooting to buy a shotgun
 
FILE - In this March 23, 2019, file photo, Columbine survivor Heather Martin reflects about the upcoming 20th anniversary of the mass shooting at her high school in Littleton, Colo. Martin helped found The Rebels Project, a support group for victims of mass shootings. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert, File)

For school shooting survivors, trauma has no time limit

PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Alex Rozenblat can still hear the cries of a wounded boy calling for help as she hid from the gunfire that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year.
 
Doors are locked at North High School, Wednesday, April 17, 2019, in Denver. Denver-area public schools closed Wednesday as the FBI hunted for an armed young Florida woman who was allegedly "infatuated" with Columbine and threatened violence just days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the attack. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Florida teenager obsessed with Columbine takes her own life

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — A Florida teenager who authorities say was obsessed with the Columbine school shooting and may have been planning an attack in Colorado just ahead of the 20th anniversary was found dead Wednesday in an apparent suicide after a nearly 24-hour manhunt.
 
FILE - In this April 25, 1999, file photo, a participant at a memorial service for the victims of the Columbine High School shooting rampage holds a "NO GUNS" sign in Littleton, Colo. Data shows that such shootings are less frequent and with fewer killed than in the years that preceded Columbine. Still, Americans worry about how safe schools are. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Some polls show parents’ growing fears of dangers at school

The deadly attack at Columbine High School in 1999 seemed to usher in a new era of school shootings.
 
In this Thursday, March 7, 2019 photo, former SWAT officer Al Joyce sits on the porch at his mother's home in Otisfield, Maine. Joyce left his job in law enforcement in Jefferson County, Colorado, after a school shooting and now works as a cashier. Joyce was part of the team that in 2006 stormed a classroom in Platte Canyon High School in the town of Bailey, southwest of Denver and saw the aftermath of a shooting. It wasn't long before the nightmares began and he started drinking heavily to avoid them. He ended up leaving the SWAT team, divorcing his wife and withdrawing from the world. "I wanted to just shut down, turn off," he said. "It didn't work out so well."(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

School shootings draw attention to officers’ mental health

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — The first SWAT team members to see the horror in the Columbine High School library had to step around bodies and ignore a wounded student’s plea for help as they searched for shooters they didn’t know had already died by their own hands.
 
Democratic presidential hopeful John Hickenlooper, back, hugs Colorado state Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, during a meeting with survivors of victims of mass shootings in Colorado Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Denver. Fields lost her son and his fiancee in a shooting in 2005. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

2020 hopeful Hickenlooper meets Columbine shooting survivors

DENVER (AP) — Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday met with survivors of the Columbine High School attack and other survivors of the state’s mass shootings just four days before the 20th anniversary of the Columbine massacre.
 
In this Wednesday, March 27, 2019, photo, Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson enjoys a coffee in a light spring breeze in the back yard of her home in Cary, N.C. For the last 20 years since she was injured in the Columbine High School attack, she has lived with post-traumatic stress disorder, along with physical pain. Now a mother of four, she has worked hard not to pass that fear on to her children. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

Columbine survivors send kids to schools altered by attack

DENVER (AP) — Dropping her kids off at school used to be the hardest part of Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson’s day.
 
FILE - In this June 9, 2017, file photo, members of the Fountain Police Department take part in Active Shooter Response Training exercise at Fountain Middle School in Fountain, Colo. Twenty years after the Columbine High School shooting made practicing for armed intruders as routine as fire drills, many parents have only tepid confidence in the ability of schools to stop a gunman, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (Dougal Brownlie/The Gazette via AP, File)

AP-NORC Poll: Most believe schools have become less safe

WASHINGTON (AP) — Twenty years after the Columbine High School shooting made practicing for armed intruders as routine as fire drills, many parents have only tepid confidence in the ability of schools to stop a gunman, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Re
 
FILE - In this March 23, 2019 file photo, former Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis reflects about the upcoming 20th anniversary of the mass shooting at the suburban Denver high school. More than a dozen principals from U.S. schools impacted by shootings have formed a support network for the next colleagues who join their unenviable ranks. The Principals Recovery Network will also advocate for resources to help schools prevent violence. The initial group of 17 includes DeAngelis and a principal from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. DeAngelis says it’s a network each participant wishes they’d had. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert, File)

Principals from schools with shootings form support network

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — In the days after a teenager shot and killed three fellow students at Ohio’s Chardon High School in 2012, then-Principal Andy Fetchik remembers getting a call from someone who knew just what he was experiencing.
 
Results of AP-NORC Center poll on attitudes toward guns;

AP-NORC Poll: Majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws

WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws, and most believe places of worship and schools have become less safe over the last two decades, according to a new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
 
FILE - In this March 15, 2019, file photo, people wait outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand. The gunman who attacked two mosques in New Zealand, killing at least 49 people, was said to have been inspired by the man who in 2015 killed nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)

Should media avoid naming the gunmen in mass shootings?

A few months after teen shooters killed 12 classmates and her father at Columbine High School, Coni Sanders was standing in line at a grocery store with her young daughter when they came face to face with the magazine cover.
 
Students, relatives and neighborhood residents, pray outside the Raul Brasil State School one day after a mass shooting, in Suzano, Brazil, Thursday, March 14, 2019. Classmates, friends and families began saying goodbye on Thursday, with thousands attending a wake in the Sao Paulo suburb while authorities worked to understand what drove two former students to attack the school with a gun, crossbows and small axes. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Brazil police: school attackers imitating Columbine massacre

SUZANO, Brazil (AP) — Two young men who stormed their former school in southern Brazil armed with a gun, crossbows and axes, killing seven people, were trying to emulate the 1999 Columbine attack in Colorado and had been planning the assault for months, police said Thursday.
 
FILE - In this Jan. 28, 2013, file photo, members of the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the Hudson Falls Police Department use unloaded guns to take part in an emergency drill as they walk through a corridor inside the Hudson Falls Primary School in Hudson Falls, N.Y. With each subsequent shooting forcing schools to review their readiness, parents are increasingly questioning elements of the ever-evolving drills that are now part of most emergency plans, including the use of simulated gunfire and blood, when to reveal it’s just practice, and whether drills unduly traumatize kids. (Omar Ricardo Aquije/The Post-Star via AP, File)

Parents question whether shooting drills traumatize kids

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Long before an ex-student opened fire on his former classmates in Parkland, Florida, many school districts conducted regular shooting drills — exercises that sometimes included simulated gunfire and blood and often happened with no warning that the attack wasn’t real.