Horror in high schools

LITTLETON, COLO.

The last time substitute teacher Rich Kauffman taught at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. was April 16, four days before 12 students and a fellow teacher died in a shooting spree by two teenagers who then killed themselves.

The fact that he didn't substitute April 20, the day of the shooting, didn't soften the blow of the news reports, said Kauffman, a member of Belleview Acres MB Church in Littleton. He retired from Columbine in 1997 after 24 years of teaching chemistry and physics.

On the Friday before the shooting, Kauffman was substitute teaching a video production class. He said that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two gunmen, were in the class. The pair, dressed in black dusters, were sitting together, and then went to check out a camcorder from the equipment room for the weekend.

The next time Kauffman heard about the pair was as he watched in horror TV reports of the 1,800 students at the Jefferson County high school hiding in closets and under desks from two killers dressed in black trench coats using guns and bombs.

The killers were part of a small group of outcasts who spent their lives in the "goth" subculture. (Goth is a style of music derived from punk, often with apocalyptic or mystical lyrics, and members favour black clothing, white and black makeup, metal jewellery and goth music.) One student told the Washington Post that the pair were into anarchy, were white supremacists, were obsessed with death, quoted lyrics by Marilyn Manson and often talked about decapitating people.

Witnesses say the two killers asked a number of students about belief in God before shooting them. Columbine High School has an active student prayer group with 80 students that meets once a week.

Faith has helped the stunned and grieving community to cope as people turn to God, Kauffman said. In a wave of ecumenical memorials, school meetings and local prayer services, including at several Mennonite churches in the area, the community gathered to bond through prayer and a sense of being family, Kauffman said.

This sense of family is what made it so hard for Joni Classen, a 1997 graduate of Columbine, to be so far from home after the tragedy struck, she said.

She moved to Siloam Springs, Ark. a day before the shooting, and was unable to return home to be with her parents, Vern and Janet Classen, and her friends. The Classens have attended Belleview Acres in the past.

Classen was especially close to slain teacher William Sanders, her track coach as a senior when she went to state finals in shot put. She's sorry she wasn't able to go home to pay him proper tribute. She said he was a good friend to many students.

Annette Miller, a former English teacher at Columbine and now a grade five teacher at Bear Creek Elementary School near Columbine, was part of a Jefferson County-wide, four-hour lock-in with her class of 30 students the day of the shooting.

Her main mission is to be with her kids and to help normalize things for them, said Miller, a member of Belleview Acres.

"I need to just love them as they are," Miller said. "Some are angry; some are sad. Some families say their kids are too afraid to come to school."

Taber

Eight days after the Columbine massacre, a 14-year-old former student at W.R. Myers High School in Taber, Alta. shot two 17-year-olds, wounding Shane Christmas and killing Jason Lang with a .22 calibre rifle.

On that fateful day, the prairie town of 7,200 was sent reeling into a state of disbelief.

For Dale and Diane Lang, parents of the slain teen, nothing could be more devasting. Yet, Lang, an Anglican minister, asked for God's mercy on "this broken society". After the memorial service, the Langs offered a prayer in the hallway of the school where their son was taken from them, reclaiming the school for good and shunning the evil.

Lorne Willms, pastor of Coaldale (Alta.) MB Church, attended the memorial for Jason. Coaldale is about 35 km west of Taber. He said Dale Lang explained to the audience that Jason was in heaven not because he was a good person, but because he knew Jesus. He said the Langs did not want the death of their son to be a "meaningless tragedy". Willms said what impressed him at the memorial service was that Lang said a prayer for the teen who killed Jason.

Les Riediger, pastor of Westview Community Church, the MB church in Grassy Lake, Alta., a community 32 km east of Taber, has known the Langs for five years as the two pastors sit on a local ministerial team in Taber. There are eight churches in Taber, not including the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), which is not part of the ministerial team. He explained that many of the students in Grassy Lake attend school in Taber because the high school recently closed in Grassy Lake. He said the hospital in Taber asked the ministerial team to act as crisis counsellors for the week following this tragedy. He also attended the memorial service, saying the community was in shock, but unlike Littleton, wanted to be left alone by the media. -- PW, with reports from Mennonite Weekly Review, Time, Evangelical Press News Service

LITTLETON, COLO.

The attack in Columbine High School, Littleton, Colo. was the worst of the recent school shootings in the US, more than doubling the number of students killed in such events since 1997:

* Oct. 1, 1997 a boy in Pearl, Miss. shot nine students, two fatally.

*Dec. 1, 1997 a student killed three students and wounded five others in Paducah, Ky.

*March 24, 1998 four girls and a teacher were shot and killed and 10 others wounded by two boys shooting from a nearby woods in Jonesboro, Ark.

*April 24, 1998 a science teacher was shot to death at a grade eight graduation dance in Edinboro, Pa.

*May 19, 1998 a student reportedly shot and killed a classmate who was dating his ex-girlfriend.

*May 21, 1998 a boy in Springfield, Ore. killed two and injured 20 others, after killing his parents.

*April 16, 1999 a high school student in Notus, Idaho fired two shotgun blasts in a school hall, but caused no injuries. -- Evangelical Press News Service

*May 1975 Michael Slobodian, 16, kills a teacher and student and wounds 13 others at Centennial Secondary School in Brampton, Ont.

*October 1978 a 17-year-old student shoots a 16-year-old to death at Sturgeon Creek Regional Secondary School in Winnipeg, allegedly for ridiculing the rock group KISS. He is found not guilty of first-degree murder by reason of insanity.

*December 1989 Marc Lépine, a 25-year-old war movie fan with a grudge against women, shoots 14 young women dead at Concordia University, Montreal, then kills himself.

*February 1990 a jilted teenager shoots his estranged girlfriend at General Brock High School in Burlington, Ont. The girl survives.

*June 1993 a teenager is wounded outside Gladstone Secondary School in Vancouver in a drive-by shooting.

*October 1994 two high school guidance counsellors at Brockton High School in Toronto are shot by a student unhappy with his grades. Both survive.

*February 1999 a man fires a shot at Woodlands Elementary School in Verdun, Que., after a woman in an adjacent adult education centre said she had been threatened by another student. No one is injured. -- Canadian Press, National Post

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