Warning Signs In Columbine, By David Cullen

After 10 years of research and writing David Cullen finally published Columbine based on one of the deadliest school shootings ever. There were many signs that were missed when it came to the Columbine shooting from their parents, friends, the school, and the police. Throughout the book we see many times in which people continued to miss the warning signs and drop the ball.

Parents love and care about their children a lot, but sometimes even parents can miss major warning signs. In David Cullen's Columbine we see many times throughout the book where Eric and Dylans parents missed a lot of the signs. Eric and Dylan’s parents did miss some of the signs that could’ve prevented this school shooting, some small signs, some big signs. One of the

There are different steps for school safety now because Columbine High School and the police were a big factor in “dropping the ball” when it came to the Columbine shooting. So many people missed a lot of signs, especially the police station. Brookes Brown and his family warned the police about Eric Harris for more than a year before Columbine, when the Brown family was threatened by Eric multiple times. It is revealed that the Browns family “had contacted the sheriff’s department about Eric fifteen times”(165). Although they contacted them fifteen times the police station never took their concerns seriously, yet if they had taken their concerns seriously there is a possibility that Columbine would have never happened. Columbine high school also dropped the ball on multiple occasions. One of these times they missed the signs was when Dylan's English teacher, Kelly read his short stories. Dylan's teacher was very concerned with the stories he was writing in class she said that were violent and disturbing, and she recalls being very concerned about Dylan based off of his stories he wrote. Kelly had even become so concerned that “she’d contacted the three people most likely to have other information about Dylan: his guidance counselor and his parents”(308). Kelly did do the right thing but his school counselor and his

One of the people who missed some of the biggest signs were Eric and Dylan's friends. There were a lot of people who knew Eric and Dylan had guns and pipe bombs, like many of their friends. Robyn Anderson was a friend to them and went to prom with Dylan. She is also someone who missed a big warning sign, she knew they had guns. Robyn was there when they bought the guns, but they just told her that they were just going to use the guns for fun. So Robyn never thought anything of it and she never thought they would use it to hurt anyone. And once she found out they were the killers she said “Only three people had known about the gun deal, and the other two were dead”(88). She thought she was the only one who knew about the guns, but their friend Chris “knew Eric and Dylan had guns. He knew they had been messing with pipe bombs”(71). Not only did one of their friends know about them having guns but two of their friends knew and they also knew about the pipe bombs. This is one of the biggest warning signs that were missed and that if Robyn or Chris would’ve said something about the guns or pipe bombs then the Columbine school shooting would’ve never