Despite ‘morbid fascination,’ Columbine High School won’t be demolished, district says

Columbine High School, the site where two shooters killed 12 students and a teacher in 1999, will not be demolished and rebuilt, officials at the Colorado district announced Wednesday.

That’s despite what the district describes as an increasing “morbid fascination” with the site of the massacre 20 years ago, according to KUSA.

Jeffco Public Schools Superintendent Jason Glass said the community could not reach a consensus about whether to rebuild the school — a discussion the district started last month in part because of unwanted visitors’ attraction to the site of the shooting, according to the district’s website.

The school district cited a Colorado Sun story that reported approximately 2,400 unauthorized visitors were stopped or arrested from June 2018 to May 2019.

In April, the FBI searched for a woman “infatuated” with the shooting who flew to Denver and purchased a shotgun, prompting Columbine and other schools to lock down, The Associated Press reported. She was found dead of an apparent suicide in Colorado, The Denver Post reported.

Part of the debate about the future of the school was whether to “redesign the building so as to remove the attraction as the site of the 1999 murders,” the district said. In all, 15 people died, including the two shooters who killed themselves.

Now the district says it plans to “create a classic and stately appearance for the school” with features to improve privacy and security.

“While Columbine High School is now arguably one of the safest schools in the world, the “unauthorized individuals” problem at the school must be addressed,” Glass said in the statement.

This story was originally published July 24, 2019 at 5:08 PM.