"It was the hardest moving from Plattsburgh. On a 1997 English class assignment, Harris wrote about how difficult the move was from New York to Colorado. During his tenure at Stafford Middle School, Harris played Little League Baseball, regularly went to birthday parties and was "part of the crowd." Kyle Ross, a former classmate of Harris, said, "He was just a typical kid." The Harris family finally settled back in Colorado the next year when Wayne retired from the military. The Harris family then moved to Plattsburgh, New York, in 1991. Stone recalled them as "great neighbors" and would often see Wayne very engaged with his sons. Michigan pastor William Stone lived across the street from the Harris family while they were located in Oscoda. Six years later, the family relocated to Oscoda, Michigan. In 1983, the family moved to Dayton, Ohio, when Harris was two years old.
His father, Wayne Harris, was working in the United States Air Force as a transport pilot, forcing the family to move around the country sporadically. His mother, Katherine Ann Poole, was a homemaker. Harris's parents were both born and raised in Colorado. For other uses, see Eric Harris (disambiguation).Įric David Harris was born on April 9, 1981, in Wichita, Kansas. Others have also dressed as the duo for cosplay or Halloween. Harris and Klebold also have a fanbase, who have coined the term "Columbiners", who write fan fiction and draw fan art of them. Many killers since the shooting have taken inspiration from the pair, either hailing them as heroes, martyrs and gods, or expressing sympathy for the pair. Harris and Klebold have become pop culture icons, with the pair often portrayed, referenced and seen in film, television, video games, music and books. Despite these conclusions, the exact motive for the attack remains inconclusive. In the following years, various media outlets attributed multiple motivating factors to the attack, including bullying, mental illness, racism, psychiatric medication and media violence. However, neither Harris nor Klebold were formally diagnosed with any mental illnesses prior to the attack. Klebold, however, was concluded to be an angry depressive, who showed low self-esteem, anxiousness and a vengeful attitude toward individuals who he believed had mistreated him. The FBI concluded that Harris was a psychopath, who exhibited a lack of empathy, narcissistic traits and unconstrained aggression. The pair's aforementioned writings and videos gave insight into their rationale for the shooting. This turned out to be untrue, as neither Harris nor Klebold had any affiliation with the group. Harris and Klebold left behind several journal writings and home videos, foreshadowing the massacre and explaining their actions, with what they hoped to achieve.Īfter the massacre, it was widely believed Harris and Klebold were part of a clique in school called the "Trenchcoat Mafia", a group of misfits in the school who supposedly rebelled against the popular students. Throughout the next year, Harris and Klebold meticulously built explosives and gathered an arsenal of weapons. From their journals, Harris and Klebold had seemed to begin planning the attack a year prior.
There are differing reports: some say Harris and Klebold were very unpopular students and frequent targets of bullying, while others say they were not near the bottom of the school's social hierarchy and each had many friends. By the time they were juniors, they were described as inseparable. Over time, they became increasingly close. Harris and Klebold met while they were in the 7th grade. history, with the ensuing media frenzy and moral panic leading it to become one of the most infamous mass shootings ever perpetrated in the US. At the time, it was the deadliest high school shooting in U.S.
After killing most of their victims in the school's library, they later committed suicide. Harris and Klebold killed 13 people and wounded 24 others on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School, where they were seniors, in Columbine, Colorado. Eric David Harris (Ap– April 20, 1999) and Dylan Bennet Klebold ( / ˈ k l iː b oʊ l d/ Septem– April 20, 1999) were an American mass murder duo who perpetrated the Columbine High School massacre.