Gunfire, screams and fire alarm can be heard on tape of shootings

By Lynn Bartels
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

The FBI is enhancing the tape of the 911 call from art teacher Patty Nielson from inside Columbine High School's library to try to get a clearer picture of what happened that grisly day.

Gunfire and screams can be heard on the 26-minute tape, but the constant ringing of the fire alarm makes it impossible at times to understand conversations, said Nielson's husband, Shane, who has heard the tape.

"At one point, Patty is praying out loud," Shane Nielson said Friday. "She just starts saying the Lord's Prayer."

Jefferson County detectives last week played the tape for Patty Nielson and asked her to clarify what can be heard and what was happening in the library at the time. Shane Nielson was with his wife when the tape was played.

The FBI has been asked to enhance the tape, Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman Steve Davis said.

"You can hear some stuff, but it's hard to discern because of the alarm," he said. "The SWAT guys that were in there said you couldn't think because of the noise. The alarm was deafening."

The alarm could only be turned off from inside the school, but authorities determined it was too dangerous to let the fire marshal inside Columbine during the shooting.

Since then, a number of school districts nationwide have changed their alarm systems so they can be turned off from the outside, Davis said.

Nielson's 911 call is crucial evidence because it came from ground zero: Of the 15 people killed at Columbine that day, 13 -- including gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- died inside the library.

Police earlier released the initial two minutes of Nielson's call, which was made before exploding pipe bombs set off the fire alarm.

The frantic teacher can be heard screaming at her students to get down as she describes to a dispatcher her encounter with one of the gunmen.

Shane Nielson said his wife was a hall monitor that day when she heard what she thought were popping sounds.

"She basically thought it was a video productions skit with a cap gun," he said. "She went out to say it wasn't a good idea and (one of the gunman) turned and smiled at her and blew out the glass doors in front of her."

She saw only one gunman, Harris, although Nielson did not identify the high school senior during her 911 call.

"She could see his face," Shane Nielson said. "He has his trench coat on and a black hat."

Harris fired at a second set of glass doors. That blast grazed Nielson in the shoulder.

She ran into the library. At 11:26 a.m. -- five minutes after the first shots were fired from outside the school -- she called 911 from a phone at a desk.

"Yes, I'm a teacher at Columbine High School and there is a student here with a gun," begins her chilling call.

As gunfire rang out, she dropped the phone and crawled underneath the desk. The dispatch center continued to record the call.

"There's constant gunfire in the background, over and over and over again," Nielson said of the entire tape. "And there's screaming."

Harris and Klebold killed 10 students in the library and then left. At that point, the surviving students ran to a back corridor and outside the school.

The four staff members who were in the library remained hiding until the SWAT team rescued them hours later.

"I don't know why the kids ran and why they stayed," Shane Nielson said. "Maybe it's an age thing."

Klebold and Harris had gone to the cafeteria to fire at one of their homemade bombs that failed to detonate.

When it did not explode, they returned to the library and killed themselves.

Investigators now believe that Harris' and Klebold's killing spree was over within 20 minutes.

The Nielson 911 call lasts 26 minutes. A dispatcher hung up because the only thing operators could hear was the blaring alarm, Davis said.

Whether the gunmen's deaths were captured during the call is unclear.

Hearing the tape, he said, was like reliving April 20.

'It was harder for her than for me, almost, because she knew what to expect," he said. "She wanted to hear it for her own healing."