Sue Klebold Recalls What Her Son Dylan Was Like at Home: Part 2

look at a kind of class picture can you pick out which ones will grow up to be school shooters almost two-thirds will be from two-parent homes nearly half of the kids will do well in school 73% of them will never have been arrested before and yet every child you see here will become a school shooter in total murdering 67 people the child in this picture is still in Klebold in her book his mother writes he wasn't the pinwheel eyed portrait of evil we know from cartoons he was shy likeable with hands-on parents who put them to bed with stories and prayers and hugs the Klebold the family who lived in this house in the foothills of the Rockies their two sons named after famous poets sue Klebold calls Dylan her shiny penny in gifted classes love little league gave big hugs and kisses and built tall ships out of Legos and he wouldn't just work on one puzzle he'd dump them all into a big mountain so that he could solve five or six of them at the same time sue Klebold says he was easily embarrassed tearful and hard on himself if he made a mistake he's shy heading into adolescence he talked about looking weird and it was a tall gawky kid with glasses but he has friends goes out to parties Friday night bowling she says some of his friends decide it's cool to look different from the jocks they buy long black coats but didn't you wonder why he wanted a trench coat what was that about well I was a kind of kid who loved to look different I mean I I was an art major she says she does notice something that Dylan seems to be losing interest in good grades he builds his own computer and spends more time alone in his room and sometimes he's Moody and irritable but she now says as she looks back over her life she is making a big mistake her son is changing but she writes off the changes as an adolescent phase sometimes he would seem you know distant or quiet and I remember asking him are you okay are you sure you're okay you seem so tired and he'd stand up and say I've got a lot of homework I just I need to and you let her go and I let it go and that's the difference I would dig if it were me today I would dig and dig and dig I mean I had all those illusions that everything was okay because and more than anything else because my love was him for him was so strong I felt that I was a good mom that he would he could talk to me about anything part of the shock of this was was that learning that what I believed and how I lived and how I parented was an invention in my own mind she says she hopes other parents watching tonight will think about what a child can be hiding it's the summer after Dylan's sophomore year long before Columbine she has a journal and in it she's writing things have been really happy this summer Dylan is yucking it up having a great time with friends she has no idea her 15 year old son has begun a secret journal of his own and his first entry is this thinking of suicide I hate my life I want to die I have a nice family good house couple of good friends no girls nobody accepting me even though I want to be accepted he plays the Nine Inch Nails song hurt and makes a list of all the people he loves who will never love him back you can see him in this video his junior year at Columbine he seems self conscious a little wistful but talks about the future the classes he'll take to help get into college so you get better chances after high school as far as College goes maybe a scholarship okay let me ask you this are you an independent learner Kubler probably independent but at this point we want to be very clear 80 to 90% of depression can be treated and even suicidal depression is not an explanation or a pathway to violence but dr. Gregory Fritz president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry once to warn parents tonight that suicidal depression is real and can strike any teen anywhere somewhere between 15 and 20% of high school kids say that they have thought about suicide and past year let me repeat 15 to 20 percent of adolescents seriously consider suicide and that's at least one child in every American classroom every 95 minutes a young person will take their life Fritz says a lot of loving parents can miss something serious sure that changes are just a phase I felt that as a parent myself just oh please don't let it be so I don't want to see it I won't just go away it's just a phase the good news is oftentimes it is it can lead us to have blind spots on the Internet thousands of kids make secret confessions a teenage girl who seems to smile just like this eternal sadness a high school star who says teenagers are better than adults at hiding depression they're so afraid of the stigma sure to look at my life on the surface you'd see a kid who was the captain of his basketball team consistently on the honor roll and consistently at every party dude say I wasn't suicidal but you'd be wrong later in this broadcast we'll tell you more about spotting teenage depression dr. fritz taking questions online but more than 17 years ago sue Klebold says she knew so little about teen depression thinking the big problem in her house was her older son grappling with drugs were you distracted well of course because we're human I mean we all have things that distract us she can't say I was too busy to notice that my son was falling apart and heading down a path of destruction could you have prevented what happened to Columbine if I had recognized that Dylan was experiencing some real mental distress he would not have been there he would have gotten help I don't ever for a moment mean to imply that I'm not conscious of the fact that he was a killer because I am a year and a half before the Columbine massacre her son is a junior a series of troubling events he hacks into the school computer system with some friends they're all suspended for three days he scratches an epithet on the locker of a kid he thinks is taunting him in the big shock on the same day he makes that video talking about his future he and another kid break into a van steal electronic equipment and police make an arrest this is a felony - it was terrible I know absolutely it was awful and at the time I thought that was the worst thing I could ever possibly experience Dylan's cold reaction after the arrest scared and shocked her he acted as if he had done nothing wrong she says she gave him one of her lectures trying to reason with him I even talked about the ten commandments I said it's wrong to steal under in no circumstances is this this right and then we responded as most parents would we took away privileges she says a lot of days he was affectionate planning for the future applying to colleges she didn't know he was writing in his journal how he wanted to get a gun to use on a poor sob himself one night she's frustrated he's not doing chores he's withdrawn she thinks he needs more discipline she pushes him against the refrigerator and I said you know you've got to stop thinking of yourself you've got to stop being so selfish but but I gave him the old mom lecture and then then I said and by the way today's Mother's Day and you forgot it and I don't remember how that confrontation ended I just remember he softly said mom please don't push me I mean I don't know how much I can control myself it wasn't it wasn't a scary thing it was just him being nice to say back off please she says she blamed herself for pushing him too far then he went out did he got me a gift little a little water it came with African violets in it and I thought everything was fine because he was so he was so sweet and inside on his way to becoming a mass shooter and there is no way to continue telling this story without going back to another little face in that class picture a friend who was with him breaking into the van Eric Harris

Channel: ABC News

Views: 1,846,564

Rating: 4.7586951 out of 5

Keywords: Sue, Klebold, Columbine, High, School, Massacre, Mass, Shootings, Gun, Control, US, Laws, ABC, News, 2020

Id: U4_FkAWLYjQ

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/satanicfreak666]

Sue klebold is a strong woman.