The Columbine High School massacre, commonly referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and a failed bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history, until it was surpassed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, and later the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022, and the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history until the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. Columbine is still considered one of the most infamous massacres in the U.S. for inspiring most other school shootings and bombings, the word "Columbine" has since become a byword for modern school shootings. Columbine still remains both the deadliest mass shooting and the deadliest school shooting to occur in the U.S. state of Colorado.
A school shooting is an armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties. The phenomenon is most widespread in the United States, which has the highest number of school-related shootings, although school shootings have taken place elsewhere in the world.
Elephant is a 2003 American psychological drama film written, directed and edited by Gus Van Sant. It takes place in Watt High School, in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, and chronicles the events surrounding a school shooting, based in part on the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. The film begins a short time before the shooting occurs, following the lives of several characters both in and out of school, who are unaware of what is about to unfold. The film stars mostly new actors, including John Robinson, Alex Frost, and Eric Deulen.
Rage is a psychological thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, the first he published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was published in 1977 and then it was collected in the 1985 hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books. The novel describes a school shooting, and has been associated with actual high school shooting incidents in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, King allowed the novel to fall out of print, and, in 2013, he published a non-fiction, anti-firearms violence essay titled "Guns".
The Red Lake shootings were a spree killing that occurred on March 21, 2005, in two places on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, United States. That afternoon, 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend at their home. After taking his grandfather's police weapons and bulletproof vest, Weise drove his grandfather's police vehicle to Red Lake Senior High School, where he had been a student some months before.
A shootout, also called a firefight, gunfight, or gun battle, is a armed confrontation entailing firearms between armed parties using guns, always entailing intense disagreement(s) between the fighting parties. The term can be used to describe any such fight, though it is typically used in a non-military context or to describe combat situations primarily using firearms.
Orange High School is a high school in the northern area of Orange County, North Carolina, United States.
The Platte Canyon High School hostage crisis was a hostage taking and shooting at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, on September 27, 2006. The gunman, 53-year-old Duane Roger Morrison, took seven female students hostage and sexually assaulted them, later releasing four. When police broke open the classroom's door with explosives, Morrison opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol before shooting hostage Emily Keyes in the head. The other remaining hostages escaped unharmed, and paramedics confirmed that Morrison had committed suicide shortly before police were able to enter the classroom. Keyes was pronounced dead at 4:32 p.m. MDT at Saint Anthony's Hospital in Denver, Colorado, after undergoing emergency surgery.
Lindhurst High School is located in Olivehurst, California, USA. It is one of two high schools in the Marysville Joint Unified School District of Yuba County and draws students from the communities of Olivehurst, Linda, Plumas Lake, and Marysville.
The Cokeville Elementary School hostage crisis occurred on Friday, May 16, 1986 in Cokeville, Wyoming, United States, when former town marshal David Young, 43, and his wife Doris Young, 47, took 154 hostages – 136 children and 18 adults – at Cokeville Elementary School.
The Jokela school shooting also known as the Jokela High School massacre occurred on 7 November 2007, at Jokela High School in the town of Jokela, Tuusula, Finland. The gunman, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, entered the school that morning armed with a semi-automatic pistol. He killed eight people and wounded one person in the toe before shooting himself in the head; twelve others were also injured by flying glass or by spraining their ankle(s) in the subsequent chaos that ensued. Auvinen died later that evening in a Helsinki hospital.
The 1974 Huntsville Prison siege was an eleven-day prison uprising that took place from July 24 to August 3, 1974, at the Huntsville Walls Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville, Texas. The standoff was one of the longest hostage-taking sieges in United States history.
Detention: The Siege at Johnson High is a 1997 American made-for-television thriller drama film based on the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting and siege that resulted in the death of four people. The film, written by Larry Golin and directed by Michael W. Watkins, stars Rick Schroder, Freddie Prinze Jr., Katie Wright, Alexis Cruz and Henry Winkler. It was originally broadcast on ABC on May 19, 1997.
The East Carter High School shooting occurred on January 18, 1993, in Grayson, Kentucky, United States. The incident occurred when 17-year-old Gary Scott Pennington walked into an English classroom and fatally shot his teacher Deanna McDavid and head custodian Marvin Hicks, and held classmates hostage for 15 minutes before surrendering to police.
On March 24, 1998, a school shooting occurred at Westside Middle School in unincorporated Craighead County, Arkansas near the city of Jonesboro. Perpetrators 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden fatally shot four students and a teacher with multiple weapons, and both were arrested when they attempted to flee the scene. Ten others were wounded. Golden and Johnson were convicted of five murders and ten assaults, and were imprisoned until each turned 21 years of age. After the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting that killed four people in Olivehurst, California, the massacre was the deadliest non-college school shooting in contemporary U.S. history until the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre. As of 2024, the incident is the deadliest mass shooting at a middle school in U.S. history.
The Dundee school shootings was a 1967 incident at St John's Roman Catholic High School in Dundee, Scotland.
On February 3, 2014, 15-year-old high school student Sergey Gordeyev opened fire at School No. 263 in Otradnoye District, Moscow, Russia, killing a teacher. Gordeyev then took 29 students hostage, killed one police officer, and injured another. Later on, he surrendered to the authorities. It is the second reported school shooting in Russia's modern history.
The Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The shooting has had an effect on school safety, policing tactics, prevention methods, and inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many killers taking their inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold by describing the two perpetrators as being martyrs or heroes.
