It has been 25 years since two teen boys walked into Columbine High School and shot 12 of their classmates and a teacher dead.
The horror that Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, unleashed on April 20, 1999, changed the world forever.
It was just a regular Tuesday in the small, idyllic town of Littleton, Colorado, which sits against the stunning backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.
Many have described it as a town where “nothing ever happened” and that was just how the locals liked it.
That morning, hundreds of students and staff walked through the front doors of Columbine High School as they had done so many times before.
Tragically, some would never walk back out.
49 Minutes of Hell
At 11.19am, the two teenage killers donned long black trench coats and armed themselves with guns, knives and explosives, ready to carry out their sickening plan.
The teenagers began gunning down their fellow students and teachers at random, with the barbaric attack leaving 13 people dead and 24 others injured.
The gunmen mercilessly took the lives of their fellow students; Cassie Bernall, 17, Steven Curnow, 14, Corey DePooter, 17, Kelly Fleming, 16, Matthew Kechter, 16, Daniel Mauser, 15, Daniel Rohrbough, 15, Rachel Scott, 17, Isaiah Shoels, 18, John Tomlin, 16, Lauren Townsend, 18 and Kyle Velasquez, 16, along with teacher William “Dave” Sanders, 47.
After the carnage, the pair took their own lives at 12.08pm.
‘Feels like yesterday’
Loving parents Sue and Rick Townsend told news.com.au it is hard to come to grips with the fact it has been 25 years since their daughter was killed in the massacre.
Their “beautiful girl” Lauren was just 18 when she was senselessly murdered in the tragedy and the pair say that it never gets easier, despite all the years that have passed.
“In some ways it feels like it was yesterday, the memories are so vivid,” Sue, 75, said.
“And sometimes it feels like it’s been forever since we had Lauren with us. We think about her every single day.
“She wanted to be a wildlife biologist, so when little things pop up, like seeing an ad for a wildlife sanctuary or hearing about an animal shelter, it reminds us of her and the things she loved.
“We always think of what she would have gone on to accomplish. She would be 43 today.
“I often wonder where she would be. Would she be married, have children? What career would she have chosen?
“I have gotten to the point now when I’m cleaning and dusting off her pictures, I can smile and remember what a joy she was instead of feeling that overwhelming sadness.”
Every year since Lauren’s death, her family honours the 20th April in a similar way.
“We will spend the day together visiting the cemeteries where all the victims are buried and deliver a rose to each grave,” Sue explained.
“We then meet the parents of Lauren’s best friend for dinner. I truly believe Lauren would be pleased with how we are honouring her memory.”
With it being the 25th anniversary, this year the couple will also attend a sunset remembrance vigil at the steps of the State Capitol.
“We plan to attend that on Friday, and then on Saturday we will make our usual rounds of visiting the cemeteries where all the kids are buried,” she said.
“We leave a rose at each gravesite. It is a time for us to remember and honour not just Lauren, but all those who we lost that day.
“We will then have dinner with her best friend and family that night in her memory.”
Sue, who first met Lauren when she was six years old and married her father two years later, said she was a beautiful, kind and positive young woman, with an “old soul”.
“There was always something special about Lauren,” Sue beamed.
“I believe she was what they call an old soul. She had an insight and perspective of the world that was far beyond her years.
“She accepted life and people just the way they were and radiated love for all living things.
“It is hard to describe what goes through your mind when something like this happens.
“For me, the world slowed down and there was a sense of being in a dream.
“There was turmoil in the pit of my stomach that felt like too much emotion swirling around.
“It is a feeling I get every year around the Columbine anniversary or when there is another mass shooting.”
Although the day stirs up painful memories, Sue and Rick said that there has also been a lot of positive things that have happened since the tragedy.
“There are several scholarships that were set up by various organisations afterwards and they have awarded millions of dollars to several hundred students over the past 25 years,” she said.
“Both my husband and I, as well as our daughter, Kristin, have served on the selection committees for the ‘Never Forgotten’ scholarship fund and the Columbine Memorial Scholarship.
“Our family set up the Lauren Townsend Wildlife Fund that awards several grants each year to help various non-profit animal causes.”
Columbine High School also has a “Day of Caring” each year on April 20, where the school shuts down and the students and staff engage in projects around the community that help others.
The “Rebel Project” was also set up in the years following the tragedy, started by student survivors who provide insight and comfort to other communities that have also experienced a mass shooting.
Sue and Rick are also instrumental in helping to maintain the Columbine Memorial, which opened in 2007.
“It was built in a park adjacent to the school,” she said.
“It is a quiet place of remembrance and reflection that honours not only the students and teacher lost that day, but the community and first responders as well.
“It was established and is funded solely by private donations. When my husband retired, he became president of the Memorial Foundation and works to maintain and improve the site by raising funds and awareness.”
The couple, along with the other families of those killed in the shooting, banded together to demolish and replace the school’s library, where most of the carnage occurred.
“How could future students at Columbine ever study in the space where so much evil had taken place?” Sue said.
“The old library was demolished and a new, bigger and better library opened in 2001. I compiled a scrapbook chronicling these efforts to focus on the goodness and healing that the project provided the families and the community.
“The scrapbook is now at the History Colorado Center in Denver.”
Sue added that she feels Lauren is still around, and shared a poignant entry from her daughter’s journal.
“When our whole family is together for family dinner or celebrating a holiday, I sometimes feel like she is smiling down on us,” she said.
“I believe Lauren shared her legacy with us in a passage she wrote in her diary shortly before she died.
“The passage is inscribed on her plaque at the memorial. The last line reads, ‘For, in the end, all there is, is love”.
History repeats itself
The Columbine massacre shocked the world, and at the time, was the worst high school shooting in U.S. history, with 13 killed.
But tragically, not much in America has changed in the 25 years since it occurred, with even deadlier events claiming the lives of more students and teachers as time has gone on.
In 2007, 23-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members in two separate attacks on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
In 2012, the savagery of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting broke hearts across the globe, with Adam Lanza, 20, viciously gunning down 26 people.
Twenty of the victims were small children between the ages of six and seven, while the other six were adult staff members.
In 2022, we were sickened once again when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas.
He murdered 19 children, aged between 7 and 10, along with two teachers, before being shot and killed by police.
The shocking 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, saw 17 people – 14 students and 3 teachers – shot to death by Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student.
Fighting for change
Tom Mauser told news.com.au that there are no words to accurately describe the feeling of losing a child to gun violence.
That loss in itself is devastating enough, but it is made worse by the retraumatisation that occurs when he sees news reports of similar horrific events happening over and over again.
The 72-year-old and his wife Linda lost their son Daniel, 15, at Columbine, and have been fighting for change ever since.
Tom described his son as an easygoing, gentle, and intelligent teenager, who loved playing chess and video games, while he also did exceptionally well in school as a straight-A student.
He remembers April 20, 1999, like it was yesterday, and like so many others have said, it was just another regular Tuesday morning.
“That day started no differently to any other,” Tom recalled.
“Sometime around noon, a co-worker told me something was happening at Columbine High School.
“We were all gathered around the television, and I heard that shots had been fired. Then came images of students fleeing the school grounds, and parents hugging terrified teenagers.
“I wasn’t overly concerned at first. This was Columbine High School, after all. And even if there was a shooting, Daniel would not be involved.”
“All we did was send him to school …”
The parents grew more concerned as the day went on and they still had not heard from their son or received any information about his whereabouts.
It was not until the following day that Tom and Linda were given the news that no parent should ever have to hear: their son Daniel had been killed.
“Using the description Linda had given them, police were able to positively identify him,” the father-of-three explained.
“Our son was dead. I thought, how the hell could he be dead? All we did was send him to school.
“We entered a parent’s ultimate nightmare, from which there was no escape.
“It became painfully obvious that our lives were about to change in a dramatic way.”
Tom is a passionate gun control activist, and has shared his experiences in his bookWalking in Daniel’s Shoes, which has detailed his journey after his son’s death.
“Whenever I hear of another mass shooting, it takes me back,” he said.
“I think of the parents of other victims and what they’re about to go through.
“Columbine did not happen because the killers were bullied. That was a very small factor.
“They wanted to kill as many students as they could, not specific ones that bullied them.
“These were two mentally disturbed kids, one a psychopath and one very depressed, and it can happen to any parent if they are not adequately tuned in to their kids.”