Fear, confusion in 911 calls

and JULIE CART

LITTLETON, Colo. -- Authorities on Friday released 911 emergency tapes that reveal the terror-in-the-making at Columbine High School - - including one frantic call from a teacher who screamed to her students to stay down as the sound of gunfire and bombs roared in the background.

At one point, four shots rang out clearly -- boom, boom, boom, boom -- as the teacher was talking to police dispatchers. "Oh God, oh God," she shouted. "Kids, just stay down." The tapes reveal the scenes of pandemonium and confusion that prevailed throughout the school as the two gunmen blasted their way through a building filled with nearly 2,000 students. The tapes also lay out elements of the police response. When the first officers arrived on the scene, the tapes show, they heard what they took to be hand grenades on the roof. One reported seeing smoke. A SWAT unit returned fire. An officer who was near the school ball field said he had spotted a man wearing a dark trench coat and carrying a gun who had headed back into the building. Then suddenly: "Shots in the building," another officer screamed. "High-caliber, high-caliber weapon," another shouted. When it was all over, 15 people lay dead -- one teacher and 14 students, including the two identified as the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. With police suspicions growing that other students may have helped Harris, 18, and Klebold, 17, officials announced Friday that they already had interviewed 500 people, mostly students, and planned to go back and question many of them three and four more times. Those being questioned include members of the so-called Trench Coat Mafia who were close to Harris and Klebold. Some 150 officers from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and surrounding local, state and federal agencies are assisting in the investigation. Complicating the process is the large number of items that must be inspected and inventoried to search for any sign of collaborators in the Tuesday massacre. "There were backpacks with bombs in there everywhere," said Colorado Gov. Bill Owens after touring the school building. "The officers in there are convinced there had to be more people involved. There's just too much stuff in there." Authorities have recovered more than 30 explosive devices, both inside and outside the school. Officials acknowledged they will have to develop strong evidence such as fingerprints on some of the unexploded pipe bombs or on a crudely made, 20-pound propane tank bomb that was smuggled into the school's kitchen area in order to make a case against any accomplices. Although there was no video camera in the library, police are reviewing tapes from other school surveillance cameras for clues into whether Harris and Klebold did have help when they entered the school shortly before the lunch hour in their long dark coats. "Ideally, (the surveillance tapes) would show the movement and also the actual placement perhaps of some of the explosive devices prior to the incident," sheriff's Lt. John Kiekbusch said. "If that's the case, we have got just very important evidence." At the school, principal Frank DeAngelis described for the first time Friday how he confronted one of the gunmen marching down a hallway and blowing out windows with a shotgun. The principal said he herded several students into a room, locked the door and waited for the gunman to pass before shepherding the frightened teenagers outside. Authorities are continuing to trace the guns brought into the school, which included two sawed-off shotguns, a semiautomatic pistol and a9-mm rifle. Federal officials said the pistol and rifle were purchased from two licensed gun dealers in Colorado about a year ago, and the shotguns were 20 years old. But officials said they still didn't know how the weapons made their way into the hands of Harris and Klebold. District Attorney Dave Thomas said it was simple for anyone to get firearms. "You can buy them on the street, you can get them wherever you want," he said. "You can steal them. You can go to the gun shows. If you're underage, you can get older friends to get them for you." In the 911 recordings, the horror that the two teens brought into the school was instantly clear. A student, thought to have made the first call, told a dispatcher that she saw a girl shot in the parking lot. "People are running out of the school like mad now," the unidentified caller said. "There's like smoke going off in the parking lot right now. There are loud noises." From within the library came a call from the frantic teacher. She struggled to control her emotions and her students as a gunman shot his way down the hall toward her hiding place. "I was on hall duty, I saw a gun," Peggy screamed on the phone to the dispatcher. "I went outside to see what was going on. He turned the gun straight at us and he shot, blowing out a window. The kid standing next to me went down. "He's right outside this hall," she said of the shooter. "My God, smoke is coming into this room! I've got the kids under a table. I don't know what's happening in the rest of the building." Today, the first of the victims will be buried -- Rachel Scott, a popular 17-year-old drama student. On Friday, the community had a memorial service for John Robert Tomlin, 16, a school weightlifter killed in the library whose body will be taken to Wisconsin for burial.

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