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Monday April 26 1:10 AM ET Colo. Town Faces More Funerals For Shooting Victims

Colo. Town Faces More Funerals For Shooting Victims

Reuters Photo
Reuters Photo

By Dan Whitcomb

LITTLETON, Colo. (Reuters) - The grieving people of Littleton were set Monday to bury four more victims of the Columbine High School massacre as new details emerged about the plans for death and destruction by the two teen gunmen.

Police say Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, planned the assault on their unsuspecting classmates down to the minute -- and hoped to kill far more than the 12 students and one teacher who were shot to death Tuesday.

Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone told NBC's ``Dateline'' in an interview Sunday that a diary found in Harris' home showed he and Klebold were ``talking about killing at least 500 people.''

National Public Radio reported that the two teens fired repeatedly at a large bomb found in the school kitchen to set it off, and fled the area when it did not explode.

That device, consisting of a 20-pound propane tank wired to a canister of gasoline, was found unexploded in a duffel bag by a bomb squad after Tuesday's bloodbath and police have said that it had the potential to be devastating.

The Colorado physician who pronounced Harris and Klebold dead at the scene said the two teens died with their bombs and guns in the school library near the bodies of 10 of their 13 victims.

Dr. Christopher Colwell of the Denver Medical Center said Harris and Klebold each died from a single gunshot wound, one through the mouth and the other to the side of the head.

``If not for the weapons around them and the ammunition belts, it would have been hard to tell them from the other students,'' Colwell said.

Colwell said he found Klebold and Harris lying next to each other, on top of what appeared to be a black trench coat, near a window in the corner of the library.

One wore an ammunition belt with a few clips around his chest, over a dark vest which could have been some kind of body armor, and a white shirt, Colwell said.

Beside the bodies were bombs and a duffel bag containing other explosive devices. Neither had obvious injuries and Colwell said they could have been dead for as little as a few minutes or as long as a few hours.

The people of Littleton were set Monday to bury teacher Dave Sanders, who has been hailed as a hero for rushing students to safety before he was shot to death in a hallway, and students Cassie Bernall, Lauren Townsend and Daniel Rohrbough.

Hundreds of Columbine students, some who credit Sanders with saving their lives, are expected to attend his services. Bernall, a 17-year-old junior, was asked by one of the assailants if she believed in God. He opened fire after she told him that she did.

Services for the remaining student victims are scheduled for later in the week.

Sunday, more than 80,000 people, weeping and clutching flowers, attended an emotional service for all of the victims, with Vice President Al Gore urging them to use their grief to create a better society.

Flanked by state and local officials, Gore spoke at the service held in an open-air shopping mall parking lot about a mile from the school.

Four Air Force F-16 jets flew overhead in tribute -- led by a graduate of Columbine High School -- and a white dove was released in the air for each of the 13 victims.

The mourners placed their flowers at the foot of a large wooden cross planted at the school, at a fence alongside the main building and atop a car belonging to one of the dead students, Rachel Scott.

Authorities were studying whether the parents of Klebold and Harris could be prosecuted if they knew of their children's plans to use their weapons to kill fellow students and to make bombs to blow up the school.

Since Tuesday's massacre in this affluent suburb southwest of Denver, questions have been asked about how Harris and Klebold could have amassed their arsenal without their parents' knowledge or without anyone else noticing.

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