Ripples from Columbine

New York state shooter apparently was fascinated by 1999 rampage in Jeffco

Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

A prosecutor announced Monday that a 24-year-old man who opened fire Sunday in a crowded Kingston, N.Y., shopping mall seemed to have a "lurid fascination" with the April 20, 1999, attack by two Columbine High School seniors.

Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams said that authorities who searched the room of Robert Bonelli were "deeply disturbed and troubled by the recovery of Columbine memorabilia from his property."

The shopping mall shootings left two people wounded and Bonelli in custody.

In Jefferson County, where students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people in the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history before taking their own lives, authorities were not surprised to learn of the ties to the Columbine tragedy.

In the years since the shootings, local agencies have become a resource for schools, police and prosecutors dealing with copycat plots.

"We get requests for everything, from all over the world," Jefferson County sheriff's spokeswoman Jacki Tallman said Monday. "We get e-mails, faxes, phone calls, requests for documents, photographs, videotapes."

She said she rarely goes more than a few days without getting such a request.

Rick Kaufman, spokesman for Jefferson County Public Schools, described the same experience. "I would say it's very regular in terms of requests for information about Columbine," he said.

Many requests come from law enforcement authorities, school officials and community leaders in places where later Columbine-like attacks have occurred, or almost occurred, or where there is fear that they might occur. Those people want advice and training.

Many other requests are from students working on term papers about the incident. Journalists also often seek information.

But there is another, more worrisome category, Tallman and Kaufman said.

A few requests for information or copies come from "people who want to stay connected to it somehow, through a lot more information than we have access to," Kaufman said.

"There's no question," said Tallman, "that we get some requests that have caused me concern - not so much that you would want to call the authorities, but a bit of a fascination with the materials."

Kaufman said he actually ignores some requests for information or documents.

"If it doesn't sound legitimate, I don't respond," he said.

Tallman said she must respond to such requests if they involve public information or public records.

"You have to balance the public's right to have these materials with how potentially dangerous they are in the wrong hands," Tallman said.

Some Columbine-related evidence still is not public record, including photographs of the crime scene.

"We've had professionals tell us in the past that this is the kind of material that will be found on the next school shooter's desktop," Tallman said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.