The mother of one of
the two perpetrators of the one of the worst school shootings in United States
history is breaking her 17-year silence, saying she has been wracked
with pain and guilt since the incident. Sue Klebold spoke to ABC News’ Diane Sawyer
on Friday about the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.,
in which her son, Dylan Klebold, and his classmate, Eric Harris,
fatally shot 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves. The interview
on a special edition of 20/20 came three days before the Monday release of
Klebold’s book, A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy.
"The one thing that I want to say is I am so sorry for what my son did,
yet I know that saying ‘I’m sorry’ is an inadequate response to all this
suffering," a tearful Klebold, 66, said during the interview. "There
is never a day that goes by that I don’t think of the people that Dylan
harmed."
Sawyer asked Klebold
about using the word "harmed." Klebold said she could not bring
herself to use a stronger word for what happened that morning, when Dylan
Klebold, then 17, and Harris, then 18, arrived at school and started mayhem.
Both arrived at the school shortly after 11 a.m. that morning, placed a propane
bomb in the cafeteria, then went outside to wait for it to detonate. When the
bomb did not go off as scheduled, both began shooting outside, then took the
rampage indoors. Along with the 13 they shot dead, 24 more were hurt, the
incident characterized by pictures on television of children running out of the
school and tearfully embracing each other outside. Columbine seemed to kick off
a slate of school shootings in the country in the years since, the deadliest
taking place in 2007 when a gunman opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech
University in Blacksburg, Va., killing 32.
Sue Klebold recalled
the horror of that morning in her interview with Sawyer. She said she was at
work when she received a telephone call from her husband, Tom, saying something
was happening at the high school and that their son might be the shooter.
"His voice sounded horrible, jagged, breathless," she said. She remembered
hyperventilating and, later, when she learned more about what was going on,
praying that her son would die. "I prayed that God would stop this.
‘Please make it stop, don’t let him hurt anybody,' " Klebold recounted to
Sawyer. Investigators later learned that Dylan Klebold and Harris had been
planning the incident for a year and that Klebold, in a journal, lamented that
nobody accepted him even though he wanted to be accepted.
Sue Klebold said there
were small signs that her son was troubled but she wrote them off to teen
growing pains and angst. "I remember asking him, ‘Are you OK? Are you sure
you’re OK?' " But she said she could have never imagined that the boy she
once thought of as her "happy, precocious, brilliant little child"
could overnight become a "hate-crazed gunman." Klebold told Sawyer
her life has seen its ups and downs since that incident and she was battled
depression. She and her husband divorced, unable to cope together with their
grief, and she survived a bout with breast cancer. In fact, it was dealing with
the harsh treatment that forced Klebold to decide she would live.
The proceeds from her
book will go toward research and foundations focused on mental illness.
Sometimes, Klebold told Sawyer, she goes to visit the Columbine Memorial.
"I feel kind of unwelcome there, like perhaps I’m intruding," she
said. "Sometimes I just sit there and think – and I tell them I’m
sorry."
