While the first five and half minutes of the call have been released to the public, the rest of the audio is "available" in the form of a transcript.[2] The call picked up the deaths of all ten students who died in the library; some can be heard begging for their lives. Since the shooting, families of the injured and deceased have strongly protested the release of the entire 911 call, fearing that it would inspire future copycats.
Columbine Library 911 Call ((FULL)) Full Version
After killing two students and wounding several others outside the school, the gunmen entered the building. They wounded art teacher Patricia "Patti" Nielson (35) and student Bryan Anderson (17) upon entry. Nielson and Anderson fled to the library, where several students had assumed that the sound of gunfire was some sort of senior prank. Less than a minute after she entered the room, Nielson called 911 as she shouted for everyone in the room to seek refuge underneath their tables.
The call was placed at 11:25 a.m.[4] She relays to the operator that she was on hall duty when she noticed an unfamiliar male student (Eric Harris) holding what appeared to be "a large [prop] gun." Thinking that the student was filming a video for class, Nielson began to walk toward the entrance in order to confront him. As she got closer, Nielson realized that the gun was real and was going to threaten Harris with campus security. The gunman turned towards her and fired without warning, causing bits of glass and shrapnel to slice into Nielson's shoulder.
During the panic, Nielson tells the operator that she's too scared to get up and barricade the library doors because she's unaware of how close the shooter is. At around four minutes and twenty seconds into the call, a large explosion erupts from Nielson's end of the line. As she tells the operator her name, Harris and Klebold enter the library and begin to execute their classmates.
At one point during the rampage, Klebold uses racial slurs against one victim (Isaiah Shoels, 18) before Harris executes them. An injured student (John Tomlin, 16) asks the shooters, "Haven't you done enough?" before he is fatally shot. Val Schnurr (18) is heard pleading for her life as Klebold taunts her with, "Do you believe in God?" Towards the 12-minute mark, a loud crashing noise is heard near the phone's receiver; Klebold was using a chair to smash a computer that was above Nielson's hiding place. When the gunmen leave, survivors are heard fleeing. A few moments later, Nielson retreats to a back storage area in the library and her voice is no longer heard during the call.
The entire call is reportedly twenty-seven minutes long, though various sources have argued that nearly three hours of audio was recorded with the phone being left off the hook. It's been disputed over the years as to whether or not the suicides of Harris and Klebold were picked up in the recording; if the audio does, in fact, last less than thirty minutes, the deaths of the gunmen would not have been heard. (They committed suicide around 12:08 p.m. and the operator had allegedly ended the call fifteen minutes earlier.)
The 911 recording is currently in the hands of the Jefferson County Police Department. They have no intentions of releasing the audio in its entirety. A YouTube video shows a reconstruction[7] of how the 911 call transpired.
The library has a large, dedicated parking lot, but the lot is used by people attending events in nearby Clement Park. When we know in advance about events, we request a parking attendant to assist, but there are times when we don't know about events.
School shootings are a dreadful epidemic. Many teachers have left the field because of it, and many people are hesitant to pursue teaching for that reason as well. Conversations need to happen about it, and meetings need to be held. However, I do not believe sharing the 911 call was the appropriate way to do that.
I had to sit through this meeting and recording twice. Once at the middle school and once at the high school. The first time, I wanted nothing more than to plug my ears and put my head down. I started counting the tiles on the floor to try to ground myself. The second time, I tried to just dissociate. I left feeling deeply disturbed, upset, and shaken. I should have just stood up and walked out, but I am a brand new student teacher and I was afraid of looking bad or calling attention to myself.
We are unable to fully predict the reopening of the Evergreen Library. Our hope is that the redesign project will finish in Spring 2024. Stay up to date and learn more at jeffcolibrary.org/evergreen-redesign.
July 6 — The following excerpts from the Columbine shooting 911 tapes, just released, show the confusion, anguish and attempts by law enforcement to deal with the unfolding situation: Call from teacher Patti Nielson hiding in library with children.
A couple of days ago, I was trying to line up two 911 phone calls, Karen Nielson's and Patti Nielson's, to the cafeteria footage, seeing where they line up. I chose these two because they happen at pretty much identical times, and since one is in the cafeteria, sounds on it can be lined up with actions shown on the footage. Because Karen Nielson's occurs in the cafeteria and Patti Nielson's occurs in the library, I'm going to be calling them the "cafeteria" and "library" call, respectively.
So, I then tried put the call directly on the cafeteria footage, at the time of the start of the library call, 11:25:04. What I saw was a lot of things that didn't line up. None of the explosions inside of the cafeteria on the footage even made a noise in either call, despite being powerful enough to shake the CCTV camera. So, I decided to analyze the cafeteria footage itself, seeing what would line up with each event:
Because of what the library call reports shortly after the explosion at 1:07, about smoke "pouring" into the library, I came to the conclusion that this was a pipe bomb that had gone off upstairs, and not in the cafeteria, and thus wouldn't be on the footage.
Anyway, based on this, each event has a corresponding event in the cafeteria, except the time between events are different. The calls have a time difference of 124 and 11 seconds (neglecting the 1:07 event), and the footage has a time difference of 130 seconds and 12 seconds. So, what I did was stretch the calls by a factor of 8.33% and reposition them, and now everything pretty much matches. Here's the final footage with the lined-up stereo calls on top of them. (Apologies for the Vimeo link, one of my alt accounts got terminated off of YouTube after uploading it twice in a row and Google Drive gives an error).
I don't know how something that makes so much sense in relation to the cafeteria footage could deviate so much from the official timeline. But, I don't know how else to explain it, since the timestamp of the cafeteria footage was verified to be accurate. If JeffCo only based the timing of some events on Patti Nielson's call, then perhaps they happened earlier than anticipated.
EDIT: Some further evidence is in Lindsay Macey's call, which she describes "people are running out of the school like mad right now" at the same time as the students in the cafeteria start evacuating
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Columbine tapes show confusionBy Trent Seibert
Denver Post Staff Writer July 6, 2000 - Complying with a judge's order, Jefferson County sheriff's officials on Wednesday released 45 hours of 911 and dispatch audiotapes recorded during the Columbine High School shootings. The recordings include a 5-minute, 21-second enhanced 911 call from inside the school library, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 10 of their 13 victims and then themselves on April 20, 1999. "I can't believe he's not out of bullets; he just keeps shooting and shooting and shooting," teacher Patti Nielson says during the call. She was repeatedly assured by a 911 operator that help was on the way. That tape cuts off just before the killing in the library begins, one of the few edits in the tapes, digitized onto CD-ROMs. "That's a key tape," said attorney Jim Rouse, who filed a Public Records Act lawsuit in April on behalf of the families of slain students Daniel Rohrbough and Kelly Fleming seeking the tapes and other documents. Sheriff's officials were also recorded trying to contact people apparently trapped in the library. "I can't get anyone on the phone," a dispatcher complained. Then, apparently, someone picked up the ringing phone. "Hello?" the dispatcher queried. "Hello?" There was no answer. The hours of tapes provide a tapestry of pain and confusion that began soon after the first reports of a bomb exploding near the school, one of the killers' tactics to divert police from the attack on the school. The tapes showed the second-by-second updates 911 dispatchers were getting of mortally wounded teacher Dave Sanders' condition, and the medical advice the dispatchers were providing. "Don't let him close his eyes," one said. "Talk to him. Encourage him."The tapes also show that while Sanders lay dying, no one informed the SWAT officials as they went through the school. The tapes recorded calm dispatchers, too, taking call after call from worried parents and grandparents, hoping to get information about their kids and grandchildren in the school. It was information the dispatchers were unable to provide. Jefferson County District Judge Brook Jackson ordered the release of the recordings in May. The order specified that portions of the tapes be edited before their release, such as deleting recordings of the actual killings in the library and some references to individuals, addresses and telephone numbers. As part of the Public Records Act lawsuit, the judge also ordered release of the sheriff's final investigative report, the ballistics report, cafeteria surveillance tapes and a Littleton Fire Department training video. Jackson has yet to rule on whether 200 volumes of backup investigative reports and the clothing worn by Daniel Rohrbough and Kelly Fleming will be released. The families sought the materials as they prepared to file negligence lawsuits against the Sheriff's Office, the killers' families and gun suppliers in connection with the massacre. The two CD-ROMs released Wednesday contain 21 90-minute tapes of 911 calls and eight dispatch tapes of the radio traffic on frequencies used by various agencies responding to the tragedy. To order copies of the 911 tapes, call 720-317-1133.Denver Post staff writer Jim Kirksey contributed to this report.Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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