Policeman cleared

Columbine inquiry concludes cop did not kill Dan Rohrbough

Kevin Vaughan and Jeff Kass, News Staff Writers

Published April 18, 2002 at midnight

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Policeman cleared

El Paso County sheriff's investigators on Wednesday cleared a Denver police officer of killing Columbine student Dan Rohrbough and brought a degree of peace to parents who have waited three years to find out who fired the fatal shots.

In clearing Denver police Sgt. Dan O'Shea, the investigators outlined compelling evidence that it was Eric Harris who killed Dan, refuting the original conclusion of Jefferson County officials that Dylan Klebold murdered the 15-year-old.

The boy's parents, who met privately with the El Paso investigators before the findings were released publicly, said they found solace in the presentation and felt for the first time as if they knew the truth.

"For the first time I had people sit down and talk to me and not try to come up with a scenario that didn't happen," said Sue Petrone, Dan's mother.

She and other family members hope to meet with O'Shea, whom they had accused in a lawsuit of accidentally shooting Dan during the confusion of April 20, 1999.

"I do feel based on what they have told me that Daniel O'Shea did not fire the bullet that killed my son," Petrone said.

However, family members declined to say what they will tell the officer.

"I think it's an insult to do it through the media," said Brian Rohrbough, the boy's father.

O'Shea was spending time with his family Wednesday and declined to be interviewed.

Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman said it was "tragic that Sgt. O'Shea has been subjected to public accusations claiming that he took a life, when in fact he courageously risked his own life to save others."

Jefferson County sheriff's officials have never believed a police officer killed Dan. But on Wednesday they acknowledged they were not clear about who killed the boy even after discrepancies were pointed out by the Rohrbough family.

They originally said Klebold killed Dan. Then, in May 2001, they said he was "shot and killed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold."

"When we approached this back in May 2001 and said we made a mistake, maybe we weren't as clear (as we could have been)," said Kate Battan, the lead investigator in the Columbine case.

And Jacki Tallman, the department's spokeswoman, said officials "could have done a better job in communicating with the families."

Rohrbough was among 12 students and a teacher who were killed at Columbine after Harris and Klebold attacked the school with an arsenal of guns and bombs.

In April 2000, Rohrbough's parents alleged in a lawsuit that a law officer, not Harris or Klebold, took their son's life. They based their allegation on statements that had been made to them, including the claims of an Arapahoe County sheriff's officer, and on inconclusive ballistics reports.

A month later, Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone released his department's official report on the Columbine tragedy. It concluded that Dan was wounded in the initial flurry of gunfire and that Klebold then walked down concrete steps and shot the boy again "at close range, killing him instantly."

After their lawsuit was dismissed, the boy's parents filed a motion for reconsideration on Dec. 26, 2001, naming O'Shea as the officer they believed to have fired the fatal shot. O'Shea said he had nothing to do with Dan's death.

The family's allegation and other questions led Stone to request an independent investigation by El Paso County Sheriff John Anderson.

Cmdr. Joe Breister, who headed the investigation, on Wednesday laid out several factors that led his team to clear O'Shea and name Harris as the killer:

• O'Shea didn't get to the school until 32 minutes after Rohrbough was killed.
• Rohrbough was hit by "full metal jacket" ammunition while O'Shea was firing hollow-point bullets that day.
• A nationally respected laboratory was able to positively show that a bullet recovered from Rohrbough's abdomen was fired by Harris from a 9mm carbine rifle.

The team also was able to answer one of the central questions that had always troubled Dan's parents: If Harris and Klebold were at the top of a hill above the boy, how did bullets that hit him take an "uphill" trajectory through his body?

Investigators found that the first shot fired by Harris from the top of the stairway hit Dan in the left knee, and he stumbled to his right. The movement dropped Rohrbough's right shoulder and exposed the left side of his chest to Harris, who was still firing the carbine rifle.

Two more shots hit Dan. One entered the left side of his chest and cut through both lungs and his heart before exiting the upper right side of his back. The second bullet hit him in the abdomen, taking a similar track before lodging in his body.

He fell to the ground, Breister said, mortally wounded, landing face down with his head turned to the right.

That scenario would account for the "uphill" path the bullets took through the body even though Harris was above the boy, Breister said.

Breister said he thought several pieces of evidence were key to the findings.

One was a tape of the very first 911 call from Columbine, made by teacher Karen Nielsen.

She described in detail three students who were wounded, and investigators were able to determine that she was talking about Dan Rohrbough, Sean Graves and Lance Kirklin.

That tape also helped investigators establish exactly when Dan was shot and compare it to other evidence -- including radio transmissions from Denver -- that showed when O'Shea arrived at the school.

Other important evidence came from scientists at the H.P. White Laboratory in Street, Md.

El Paso officials submitted ballistics evidence to the laboratory, including the bullet recovered from Dan's body, and three other slugs that had been fired from Harris' rifle, from the semiautomatic pistol Klebold carried, and from O'Shea's submachine gun.

Engineers at the lab found the bullet from Dan's body and the one fired from Harris' gun were "a textbook match."

That went further than the initial ballistics analysis, done at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which concluded that the bullet was "consistent" with Harris' gun but could not be positively identified.

The El Paso investigators also had to deal with 30 witnesses who didn't want to be interviewed and 46 others they couldn't track down.

And they encountered confusion along the way.

For example, one of the key pieces of evidence presented by Dan's parents in their lawsuit was a sworn statement by Celine Marquez, who met with O'Shea two days after the Columbine trajedy. She told the family that O'Shea had been very emotional and that he had expressed the fear to her that he might have shot a student by mistake. She even used the term "friendly fire" in her statement.

But when an El Paso investigator spoke with her in January, she said O'Shea had never used the words "shot" or "kill" or the phrase "friendly fire." At the same time, she said she stood by her sworn statement, Breister said.

Breister described the interview and the sworn statement as "very inconsistent."

Reacting to the report, Brian Rohrbough said the El Paso investigators "did a very credible job."

Rohrbough said he plans to carefully study the 3,255 pages of supporting documents in the report and then make a final decision about dropping the allegation against O'Shea from the lawsuit.

He and other family members said they believe the way Jefferson County officials handled the case played a large part in leading them to their beliefs that an officer had killed the boy.

The family's attorney, Barry Arrington, said the Jefferson County investigation was "at the very, very least, grossly, grossly negligent."

News staff writer Lynn Bartels contributed to this report.

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