The Littleton Massacre: ...In Sorrow And Disbelief

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There was nothing the school could have done differently, insisted Columbine's principal Frank DeAngelis. "We could have had the National Guard on alert, and it wouldn't have stopped this," he said. Metal detectors would not have stopped the rampage at the door, and he doesn't think the killers stashed their arsenal ahead of time, an argument that became harder to defend when it was reported that as a member of the audio-visual program, Harris may have had a key to the school. Maybe it would help to search routinely every car in the lot, the principal said, but that "is just not practical." DeAngelis passed the job back to students. "It's students' responsibility to report even idle threats. They must tell adults, and then it's our job to check them out." So how could glaring omens like Harris' website pages, on which he reportedly threatened another kid's life, or his violent fantasy stories and videos be missed? DeAngelis has no answer.

In the meantime, the Columbine survivors are left with their fear and grief. The grocery stores are out of cellophane cones of flowers. Prom pictures have become obituary shots. A bunch of kids went out to dinner at Applebee's Thursday night. Everyone stared. "They knew we were kids from Columbine," says junior Scott Schulte. "No one said anything. Then a waitress dropped a booster chair. We all jumped."

Sara Martin has come to her own conclusions. The graduation speaker now hopes she won't have to speak at all. "When those guys walked into the hallways in their trench coats, with their guns and their bombs, they brought in fear and hate and pushed out everything else--every ounce of life."

In its place, students planted crosses: four pink ones for the girls, nine blue ones for the boys--and two black ones, set apart, for the killers.

--Reported by Julie Grace, S.C. Gwynne, Maureen Harrington, David S. Jackson, Jeffrey Shapiro and Richard Woodbury/Littleton