Julie Turkewitz and Jack Healy

Surrounded by officials, Sheriff Tony Spurlock of Douglas County identified the suspects in the shooting Tuesday at STEM School Highlands Ranch, which killed an 18-year-old senior who had only three days of classes left and injured eight other students. Earlier, he said, officers had mistakenly identified the juvenile as a young man.

The suspects, who were also students at the school, carried two handguns and at least one of them was restrained by a school security officer by the time law enforcement arrived, the sheriff said.

The sheriff said the attackers got “deep inside the school,” which he described as having two major crime scenes, including a classroom where most of the shooting took place. At least one student, he added “actually tried to stop one of the suspects and was shot.” That student was injured but survived, he said.

“We are going to hear about very heroic things that have taken place,” Spurlock said.

While details of the shooting remained sparse, relayed some of the chaos that erupted in their classroom.

Brad Bialy said his oldest son, Brendan, a senior, told him that he was in class when gunfire erupted. Bialy said his son told him that two students entered the classroom and one pulled a gun out of a guitar case.

He said his son and two friends tried to tackle the gunman, but one of the boys was shot in the chest. Other students tried to stanch the bleeding by putting pressure on his chest, Bialy said.

Spurlock said deputies had to force their way into the school because it was locked down. Law enforcement happened to choose a door that was near the shooting and quickly apprehended one of the suspects, who was identified as Devon Erickson, 18.

Erickson will have his first court hearing Wednesday afternoon, said District Attorney George Brauchler. He added that he would consider trying the juvenile suspect as an adult.

Spurlock said neither suspect had been on law enforcement’s radar before the shooting and that the motive was unknown.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/highlands-ranch-school-shooting.html" id="06a57c30-19b8-3c22-ab4e-9dc13617e382">The New York Times</a>.

Colorado School Shooting Victim Had Only 3 Days of Classes Left

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. — Two suspects who carried out an armed attack at a school outside of Denver have been identified as an adult male and a juvenile female, authorities said Wednesday, as they continued to investigate an assault that reached “deep inside the school.”

Erickson will have his first court hearing Wednesday afternoon, said District Attorney George Brauchler. He added that he would consider trying the juvenile suspect as an adult. Brauchler, a Republican, is well known in the state for his support of the death penalty and led the prosecution of the man convicted of killing 12 people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012.

On Tuesday evening, police tape was strung up outside the prim brick suburban home where neighbors said Erickson’s family has lived since the late 1990s. A next-door neighbor who declined to be named described him as a quiet young man who sometimes deflected eye contact and played several musical instruments.

Spurlock said neither suspect had been on law enforcement’s radar before the shooting and that the motive was unknown. He declined to say how the suspects had obtained the guns, though in Colorado it is illegal for anyone under 21 to own a handgun.

The shooting at the Highlands Ranch charter school is the latest at an educational institution, a phenomenon that has rattled communities nationwide as young people continue to face mortal danger in places long considered safe havens. One week earlier, a man with a pistol shot six people on the last day of spring classes at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, killing two.

STEM School Highlands Ranch, which has about 1,800 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, will be closed for the rest of the week. Douglas County is an affluent area south of Denver with about 350,000 people. It sits next to Jefferson County, home to Columbine High School, and students there are already primed to watch for gunmen.

Students who were not injured Tuesday afternoon were taken to Northridge Recreation Center in Highlands Ranch, where hundreds of anxious parents gathered to look for their children.

“I heard a gunshot,” said Makai Dixon, 8, a second grader who had been training for this moment, with active shooter drills and lockdowns, since he was in kindergarten. “I’d never heard it before.”

Makai’s parents said they joined thousands of others in rushing to the school as news blazed through the suburban community.

“We’re more messed up than they are,” Makai’s mother, Rocio, said as they walked to their car.

Surrounded by officials, Sheriff Tony Spurlock of Douglas County identified the suspects in the shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch, which killed an 18-year-old senior who was just three days from graduation Tuesday and injured eight other students. Earlier, he said, officers had mistakenly identified the juvenile as a young man.

The suspects carried two handguns and at least one of them was restrained by a school security officer by the time law enforcement arrived, the sheriff said. During the attack, he added, there was at least one encounter between a student and a suspect.

“We are going to hear about very heroic things that have taken place,” he said.

While details of the shooting remained sparse, the sheriff said the attackers got “deep inside the school,” and one parent said Tuesday that students had tried to stop the attack.

The sheriff’s office identified one of the suspects, the adult male, as Devon Erickson, 18. He was to have his first court hearing Wednesday afternoon, said District Attorney George Brauchler. He added that he would consider trying the juvenile suspect as an adult.

On Tuesday evening, police tape was strung up outside the prim brick suburban home where neighbors said Erickson’s family has lived since the late 1990s. A next-door neighbor who declined to be named described him as a quiet young man who sometimes deflected eye contact.

Colorado School Shooting Victim Was 3 Days Away From Graduation

The sheriff’s office identified one of the suspects, the adult male, as Devon Erickson, 18. He was to have his first court hearing Wednesday afternoon, said District Attorney George Brauchler. He added that he would consider trying the juvenile suspect as an adult. Brauchler, a Republican, is well known in the state for his support of the death penalty and led the prosecution of the man convicted of killing 12 people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012.

Spurlock said that neither suspect had been on law enforcement’s radar before the shooting and that the motive was unknown.

Highlands Ranch students who were not injured were taken to Northridge Recreation Center in Highlands Ranch, where hundreds of anxious parents gathered to look for their children Tuesday afternoon.

“I heard a gunshot,” said Makai Dixon, 8, a second-grader who had been training for this moment, with active shooter drills and lockdowns, since he was in kindergarten. “I’d never heard it before.”

Sheriff Jeff Shrader of Jefferson County, Colorado, said the woman, identified as Sol Pais, 18, was found dead from an “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Before she was found, authorities said Pais had traveled to Denver and was considered armed and “extremely dangerous,” leading to the decision to keep about half a million students home in two dozen school districts.

An FBI bulletin sent to local law enforcement agencies Tuesday said Pais was “infatuated” with the Columbine attack, and officials expressed concerns about her mental stability. She had also purchased a shotgun and ammunition after arriving in Denver, authorities said.

Pais, a student at Miami Beach Senior High School, had last been seen wearing a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and black boots, authorities said.

Shrader said it did not appear that she had any help from friends in the area, just a fascination with the Columbine area and the horrendous crime that took place there 20 years ago.

He said that he did not believe that law enforcement officials were “in active pursuit at the time she was found dead.”

Officials knew immediately that the threat was serious, said John McDonald, the school safety executive director of Jefferson County. “The shadow of Columbine looms pretty large,” McDonald said. “We are used to threats certainly at Columbine. This one felt different.”

McDonald said the system did not want to play into the fascination with Columbine. “We’re not a place to come visit if you’re not a student,” McDonald said. “We’re not a tourist attraction. We’re not a place for you to come and gain inspiration.”

For some of the youngest students, this was their first introduction to the Columbine shooting, and to its legacy.

“It’s sad and scary,” said Jeff Desserich, a math teacher at a charter school in Denver, who spent the morning trying to explain to his daughters Anais, 8, and Elena, 6, why they would not be going to class.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/us/columbine-shooting-sol-pais.html" id="599a0082-eabf-32fc-ae4e-90384c128014">The New York Times</a>.

DENVER — A Florida student who officials said was on a “pilgrimage” to Columbine near the 20th anniversary of the shooting was found dead Wednesday. Her threats had prompted a massive police hunt in the Denver area and the closing of hundreds of schools.

Woman Wanted Over Columbine Threats Is Dead

An FBI bulletin sent to local law enforcement agencies Tuesday said Pais was “infatuated” with the Columbine attack and officials expressed concerns about her mental stability. She had also purchased a shotgun and ammunition after arriving in Denver, authorities said.

Law enforcement officials were worried by Pais’ determination: She bought a plane ticket, made the journey and bought a gun, he said. McDonald called it a “pilgrimage.”

When she bought the gun at a shop in Littleton, near Columbine, that raised the threat, officials said.

The decision to close schools across the area was made when they realized that Pais was moving over a wide area, from the airport, to Littleton to the foothills of the mountains. They suggested that she had used Uber to get around.

But officials said they had been making contingency plans to reopen the schools in case the threat continued, even if that meant overcoming logistical hurdles such as sources of transportation and food service. “We did not wish to have one person hold all of the schools in the front range of the whole state hostage,” said Jason Glass, the superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools. Glass said that even though those plans had not been carried out, they would be saved for the future.

McDonald, the school safety director, said the system did not want to play into the fascination with Columbine. “We’re not a place to come visit if you’re not a student,” McDonald said. “We’re not a tourist attraction. We’re not a place for you to come and gain inspiration.”

Pais’ parents reported her missing to police in Surfside, Florida, on Monday. Officers there alerted Miami Beach Police, where Pais went to school. Investigators there found alarming social media posts apparently written by Pais and contacted federal law enforcement, Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said.

Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, confirmed Wednesday that Pais was a student at Miami Beach Senior High School. The school district was assisting the FBI with its investigation, Gonzalez-Diego said.

The FBI said that Pais had arrived at the Denver airport and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition at a store. “She was then taken to an area where she was last seen out toward the foothills,” Phillips said.

“Because of her comments and her actions, because of her travel here to the state, because of her procurement of a weapon immediately upon arriving here,” he added. “We consider her to be a credible threat — certainly to the community and, potentially, to schools.”

The search for Pais quickly upended families across the Denver region. Thousands of parents woke Wednesday morning to discover that schools had been canceled and that they would have to explain the cancellation to their children.

Some parents decided that they would keep their children inside all day; others said this would effectively hand Pais a victory.

“I said, ‘There is a lady, she probably has some sort of mental health issue,’” he said, “And I talked a little about the sad events of Columbine and how her flying to Denver and buying a weapon, that’s a really big flag for law enforcement.”

Just last Friday, Colorado’s Democratic governor signed a “red flag” law that would allow guns to be temporarily seized from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others. The act was bitterly opposed by more than a dozen sheriffs and officials from largely rural, conservative counties who vowed not to enforce it.

The state also passed significant gun control measures in 2013 that expanded background checks, but despite that, Colorado does not have a specific waiting period for someone who wants to buy a gun.

In Florida, The Miami Herald reported that a man who answered the door at Pais’ address Tuesday identified himself as her father and said he had lost contact with her Sunday. “I think maybe she’s got a mental problem,” he told The Herald. “I think she’s going to be OK.”

In Colorado, the announcement prompted “lockouts,” or heightened security measures, at schools in Jefferson County and the surrounding area Tuesday. During a lockout, all exterior doors are locked at a school but business continues as usual inside. Police officers aided in end-of-day student release. County officials said that all students and staff members were safe.

It was not the first threat for students at Columbine High School. In December, an anonymous caller claimed bombs had been planted inside the school. Police responded, but the threat proved to be a hoax.

During the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999, two students shot and killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher.

The shooting’s aftermath was widely televised, and young people across America continue to be influenced by the symbology of the Columbine shooting and the students who carried it out, according to law enforcement officials, researchers and educators.

In May 2018, a 17-year-old junior in Santa Fe, Texas, shot his teachers and fellow students with a sawed-off shotgun while wearing a black trench coat and carrying Molotov cocktails, his arsenal and attire inspired by the Columbine gunmen. The 20-year-old attacker who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 had compiled materials on the Columbine attackers on his computer. And in his manifesto, the 23-year-old student who shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 had called the Columbine gunmen by their first names and described them as “we martyrs.”

The killers have achieved dark folk hero status in the corners of the internet where their carefully planned massacre is remembered, studied and in some cases even celebrated, officials say. Their admirers, often known as “Columbiners,” are frequently depressed, alienated or mentally disturbed, drawn to the Columbine subculture because they see it as a way to lash out at the world and to get the attention of a society that they believe bullies, ignores or misunderstands them.

Jefferson County, home to Columbine High School, has spent the past 20 years grappling with that legacy.

Students, teachers, families and law enforcement officers have had to deal not only with the emotional trauma of the shooting, but also with the people who have become obsessed with it and the copycats who have carried out their own attacks.

In an interview last year, the head of safety for Jefferson County schools, John McDonald, said he had often apprehended people who came from around the country to try to enter the school, a major safety concern. These visits — and interest in the shooting — have only increased over time, he said: “I’ve been dealing with this for more than a decade, and it’s never been more of an issue than it is now, 20 years later.”

Identified as Sol Pais, 18, the woman had traveled to Denver and bought a firearm before the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, officials said.

Sheriff Jeff Shrader of Jefferson County, Colorado, said Pais was found dead from an “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Before she was found, authorities said Pais was considered armed and “extremely dangerous,” and the decision to keep about half a million students home in two dozen school districts showed the sense of alarm among officials.

In a news conference Tuesday night, Dean Phillips, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Denver, said the search had turned into a “massive manhunt.” Phillips said his team had received a tip Tuesday morning from federal agents in Miami identifying Pais as a possible threat in Colorado.

School superintendents throughout the Denver area decided during a conference call Tuesday night to jointly close schools Wednesday morning as a precaution, The Denver Post reported.

Pais’ parents reported her missing to local police Monday, Detective Sgt. Marian Cruz, a spokeswoman for the Surfside Police Department, said Wednesday. Police have not been called to the family’s address before, she added.

Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, confirmed Wednesday that Pais is a student at Miami Beach Senior High School. The school district is assisting the FBI with its investigation, Gonzalez-Diego said.

The FBI then discovered that Pais had arrived at the Denver airport and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition at a store. “She was then taken to an area where she was last seen out toward the foothills,” Phillips said.

DENVER — A Florida high school student was found dead Wednesday after she had made threats that prompted hundreds of schools to close across the Denver area, according to law enforcement officials.

Identified as Sol Pais, 18, the woman had traveled to Denver and bought a firearm ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, officials said.

Authorities said Pais was considered armed and “extremely dangerous,” and the decision to keep about half a million students home in two dozen school districts showed the sense of alarm among officials.

DENVER — A Florida high school student was found dead Wednesday after she had made threats that prompted hundreds of schools to close across the Denver area, according to the FBI.

Woman Wanted Over Columbine Threats Is Dead, FBI Says

The decision to keep about half a million students home in two dozen school districts over a vast swath of Colorado showed the sense of alarm among authorities. An FBI bulletin sent to local law enforcement agencies Tuesday identified the woman as Sol Pais. She was “infatuated” with the Columbine attack, authorities said, and had purchased a shotgun and ammunition after traveling to Colorado on Monday.

Pais is about 5-foot-5 with brown hair and was last seen wearing a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and black boots, authorities said. An FBI official expressed concerns about her mental stability.

In a news conference Tuesday night, Dean Phillips, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Denver, said the search had turned into a “massive manhunt.” Phillips said his team had received a tip that morning from federal agents in Miami identifying Pais as a possible threat in Colorado.

“Her comments, her actions that we have heard about from others, tend to cause us great concern that she may pose a threat to a school,” he added.

DENVER — Hundreds of schools across the Denver area were closed Wednesday as law enforcement officials searched for a Florida high school student who they said had made threats before the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting. The suspect, an 18-year-old woman, was considered armed and “extremely dangerous.”

Hundreds of Denver Schools Are Closed as FBI Seeks Woman 'Infatuated' With Columbine

The decision to keep about half a million students home in two dozen school districts over a vast swath of Colorado showed the sense of alarm among authorities. An FBI bulletin sent to local law enforcement agencies Tuesday identified the woman as Sol Pais, 18. She was “infatuated” with the Columbine attack, the bulletin said. She had purchased a shotgun and ammunition.

School superintendents from throughout the Denver area decided during a conference call Tuesday night to jointly close schools Wednesday morning as a precaution, The Denver Post reported.

Pais is about 5-foot-5 with brown hair and was last seen wearing a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and black boots, authorities said. She had recently traveled to Colorado, law enforcement officials said. An FBI official expressed concerns about her mental stability.

Pais’ parents reported her missing to local police Monday, Detective Sgt. Marian Cruz, a spokeswoman for the Surfside Police Department, said Wednesday. That has been the only time police have been called to the family’s address, she added.

The FBI then discovered that Pais had arrived at the Denver airport before buying a pump-action shotgun and ammunition at a store. “She was then taken to an area where she was last seen out toward the foothills,” Phillips said.

“Her comments, her actions that we have heard about from others tend to cause us great concern that she may pose a threat to a school,” he added.

If authorities find Pais, it is not clear if they can arrest her. The bulletin sent to local police said they did not have probable cause for arrest, but that officers should detain her “and evaluate mental health status.”

Just last Friday, Colorado’s Democratic governor signed a “red flag” law that would allow for guns to be temporarily seized from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others. It was bitterly opposed by more than a dozen sheriffs and officials from largely rural, conservative counties who vowed not to enforce it.

The state also passed significant gun control measures in 2013 that expanded background checks, but despite that, Colorado does not have a specific waiting period for someone who wants to buy a gun, even if they are a teenager just getting off a plane from Miami.

In Colorado, the announcement prompted “lockouts,” or heightened security measures, at schools in Jefferson County and the surrounding area. During a lockout, all exterior doors are locked at a school but business continues as usual inside. Police officers aided in end-of-day student release. County officials said that all students and staff members were safe.

It was not the first threat for students at Columbine High School. In December, an anonymous caller claimed bombs had been planted inside the school. Police responded but the threat proved to be a hoax.

During the Columbine High School shooting, on April 20, 1999, two students shot and killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher.

The shooting’s aftermath was widely televised, and young people across America continue to be influenced by the symbology of the Columbine shooting and the two high school students who carried it out, according to law enforcement officials, researchers and educators.

In May 2018, a 17-year-old junior in Santa Fe, Texas, shot his teachers and fellow students with a sawed-off shotgun while wearing a black trench coat and carrying Molotov cocktails, his arsenal and attire inspired by the Columbine gunmen. The 20-year-old attacker who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 had compiled an enormous mass-murder spreadsheet and materials on the Columbine attackers on his computer. And in his manifesto, the 23-year-old student who shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 had called the Columbine gunmen by their first names and described them as “we martyrs.”

Students, teachers, families and law enforcement officers have had to deal not only with the emotional trauma of the shooting, but also with people who have become obsessed with it, as well as copycats who have carried out their own attacks.

In an interview last year, the head of safety for Jefferson County schools, John McDonald, said he had often apprehended people who came from around the country to try to enter the school, a major safety concern. These visits — and interest in the shooting — have only increased over time, he said: “I’ve been dealing with this for more than a decade and it’s never been more of an issue than it is now, 20 years later.”

DENVER — Hundreds of schools across the Denver area were closed Wednesday as law enforcement officials search for a Florida woman who they said had made threats before the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting and was considered armed and “extremely dangerous.”

Instead, millions of parents, students and educators across Colorado awoke on Wednesday to news that an armed 18-year-old woman with an infatuation with the massacre had flown across the country to Colorado and that hundreds of schools had closed as a precaution as authorities frantically searched for her.

By day’s end, the woman, a Florida high school student identified as Sol Pais, was discovered dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the mountains west of Denver.

Law enforcement officials said they had been worried by Pais’ determination: She bought a plane ticket, made the journey and bought a gun. John McDonald, the school safety executive director for Jefferson County Public Schools, which includes Columbine, called it a “pilgrimage.”

To many parents, the school closings and the frenzied manhunt drove fears that Columbine still had the power to captivate would-be attackers and that the community would never be free from the massacre, which took place on April 20, 1999, and left 12 students and one teacher dead.

“What does this mean for tomorrow and the next day?” asked Dana Gutwein, 34, who has a first-grader and third-grader in the Jefferson County Public Schools District, which includes Columbine. Gutwein was unsure whether she would immediately let her children go back to class when the hundreds of schools that had closed on Wednesday reopen.

“I’ve felt like I’m on the verge of throwing up since this started,” she said.

Across the Denver metro area, parents struggled to find the right words to explain the latest safety warnings to children who have grown up in an anxious era of lockdowns and active-shooter drills. At Columbine, students who were organizing a day of service to mark the 20-year anniversary saw their preparations eclipsed by emergency text messages from the school district, news alerts on their phones and dread.

“This week our message was supposed to be about love and recommitment,” said Rachel Hill, 17, a senior at Columbine. “But now all the news surrounding Columbine is about fear.”

Some parents said they told their children to play close to home on Wednesday. Others shook their heads at how a threat from one teenager could keep half a million students home from school and throw an entire city into panic.

As the anniversary approaches, the threat and the fears have turned what was supposed to be a time of healing into a renewed source of trauma, said Urania Glassman, a clinical social worker and professor at Yeshiva University in New York.

“You have somebody who wants to throw a grenade on that parade and so do harm again,” Glassman said. “It retraumatizes people who were present and survived, it retraumatizes the families and it retraumatizes the communities.”

Even 20 years later, young people across America continue to be influenced by the symbology of the Columbine shooting and the students who carried it out, according to researchers and educators.

Law enforcement officials said Pais, a student at Miami Beach Senior High School, had been “infatuated” with the Columbine shooting and had made alarming social media posts and threatening statements to friends and family.

On Monday, she flew from Miami to Denver and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition at a store in Littleton, not far from Columbine High School.

Colorado tightened its background check laws in recent years, but it does not have a set waiting period before buying a gun.

Pais’ parents in Surfside, Florida, reported her missing to local police on Monday. They provided investigators with information that helped them track her to Colorado, said Chief Julio Yero of the Surfside Police.

Law enforcement officials issued warnings on Tuesday expressing concerns about Pais’ mental stability and saying that she was armed and “extremely dangerous.” They launched what they called a “massive manhunt.” Schools across suburban Denver, already anxious about the approaching anniversary of the shooting, locked all their doors and stepped up security.

“We are used to threats certainly at Columbine,” said McDonald, the school safety director. “This one felt different.”

Sheriff Jeff Shrader of Jefferson County, Colorado, said it did not appear that Pais had any help from friends in the area, just a fascination with Columbine and the horrendous crime that took place there.

At Miami Beach Senior High School, Katherin DeVargas Gil, a 17-year-old senior who took freshman Spanish and AP studio art with Pais this year, described her as “kind of in a corner.” Classmates said she was quiet and intelligent, but DeVargas Gil said a social media account with disturbing posts attributed to a Sol Pais had also made the rounds among her classmates.

“We talked about it in our first-period class,” DeVargas Gil said. “I even texted my mom, crying, saying I don’t want to be here.”

Brandon Bossard, a sophomore who had a second-period class with Pais, said she usually sat in chairs up against the classroom wall, alone.

“I didn’t believe it. I didn’t understand it,” he said. “She’s so quiet. How could someone so quiet be like that?”

An online journal that authorities said they were investigating in connection with Pais read like a catalog of isolation, depression and anguish, illustrated with pictures of knives and guns. In a July 2018 entry, the journal writer described waking up every day feeling “lost, hopeless, angry, pissed off.” FBI officials would not say on Wednesday whether they had determined if Pais was the author.

It was a tactical team from the Clear Creek County sheriff’s department that found Pais’s body, near Echo Lake, according to the sheriff, Rick Albers. According to the sheriff, Pais had taken a rideshare to a lodge by the lake.

At some point she had hiked about half a mile from the lodge, and then about 100 yards up a hill. She would have had to hike through snow to get there, somewhere between 1 and 4 feet deep, officials said. Clear Creek deputies found her by a stump, dead from a gunshot wound. She was in the same clothing the FBI had reported her as wearing — boots, camouflage pants and a black shirt. She was also wearing a plaid jacket, and had a bag and a shotgun with her. Albers said that he did not know of any other guns found on her.

For some of the youngest students at home on Wednesday, the episode was their first introduction to the Columbine shooting, and to its legacy of worry and tripwire responses to threats to schools.

“I said, ‘There is a lady, she probably has some sort of mental health issue,’” he said. “And I talked a little about the sad events of Columbine.”

Emily Fern, whose 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter go to school in Littleton, sat in bed on Wednesday morning debating whether to say anything at all to her children about why they were staying home. Her son, Hayden, loves Spider-Man and superheroes, so Fern decided to explain the threat in terms of “good guys” and “bad guys.”

Before leaving for her job as a hair stylist, Fern, 38, said she told her babysitter not to go farther than the front lawn of their cul-de-sac on Wednesday, and to run inside, lock the doors and call 911 if she saw anything suspicious.

“Just that feeling that she could be lurking in the neighborhoods,” Fern said of the threat. “You’re kind of looking everywhere.”

In Jefferson County, officials were making contingency plans to reopen schools, even if that meant overcoming logistical hurdles like changes in transportation and food service. “We did not wish to have one person hold all of the schools in the front range of the whole state hostage,” said Jason Glass, the schools superintendent.

Glass said even though those plans had not been implemented and schools would open on Thursday, they would be saved for the future.

McDonald, the school safety director, said the system did not want to play into the fascination with Columbine. “We’re not a place to come visit if you’re not a student,” he said. “We’re not a tourist attraction. We’re not a place for you to come and gain inspiration.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="599a0082-eabf-32fc-ae4e-90384c128014" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/us/columbine-shooting-sol-pais.html">The New York Times</a>.

Woman wanted over Columbine threats is dead

DENVER — The 20th anniversary of the attack at Columbine High School was supposed to be marked with prayers and memorials.

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Julie Turkewitz and Jack Healy

Articles written by the author

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Woman wanted over Columbine threats is dead