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LITTLETON - Columbine High School and the town of Littleton, Colorado, quietly marked the eighth anniversary of the 1999 massacre today, haunted by the worst shooting rampage in modern US history just four days ago.
Columbine High School was closed, as it is every year, to mark the
day that students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher and wounded 24 people before committing suicide in the library.
Family members of the dead are invited to return to Columbine each April 20. it was not clear if any had done so on Friday, though several people gathered at a memorial under construction at an adjacent park and the tennis team carried on with practice.
A Christian group placed 13 crosses on a hill overlooking the school, as they do each year, and a campus flag flew at half-staff. Two young women, who said they attended high school in the area at the time of the Columbine massacre, laid flowers outside the school's library, where 10 students were killed.
Evan Todd, who was wounded in the school's library when Harris and Klebold first opened fire there, stayed away from the campus and said he was sickened by the murderous rampage at Virginia Tech.
Cho Seung-Hui, a Korean-born student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday before committing suicide, referred to Harris and Klebold as "martyrs" in a written manifesto mailed to a TV network.
"I've been sick to my stomach all week but, sadly, this didn't surprise me," Todd, now 23 and a part-time college student, told Reuters. "That shooting in Virginia was horribly similar to Columbine."
Todd said he wasn't surprised by Cho's rampage because "the main ingredients in our society that cause these shootings haven't changed".
Columbine sparked a nationwide debate on guns, school safety and graphic video games after reports surfaced that Harris and Klebold played violent games.
At the memorial, Heather McDowell, who was a student at a neighbouring high school in 1999 and has since been a student teacher at Columbine, said she took a day off from work to observe the anniversary.
"It was a good chance to reflect," said McDowell, 23.
Brian Rohrbough, whose 15-year-old son Daniel was killed at Columbine, used the anniversary of the massacre to call for release of a videotaped manifesto by Harris and Klebold that has long been sealed by local authorities for fear of encouraging copycats.
Rohrbough said at a news conference that authorities could learn from the manifesto and might even have prevented the slaughter at Virginia Tech.
"When information is uncovered and does not compromise the investigation it should be out there," he said. "I'm encouraged that the authorities in Virginia are being open with what they are learning."
- REUTERS