Dustin Gorton, a student at Columbine High School, after he found out the shooters were his friends
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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That would be truly terrible. Not only did you lose friends, but your friends caused it all. Would be hard not to feel some responsibility for not noticing something beforehand.
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I can’t remember the exact details, but one of the things revealed years later that is incredibly important is that the shooters were assumed to be “shy, quiet loners who were picked on”. There was this really unfortunate trend after high school to label quiet kids as potential shooters. IIRC, it came out years later that the two shooters did not actually fit this description. One was a bully himself who would often use homophonic slurs against younger kids. The other was obsessed with guns and the military. Again, I don’t remember everything about the report but that stuck out to me.
Such pain, can’t imagine the guilt by association. Hope he was able to move past this chapter.
From what I remember of the documentaries, the closest person they had to another friend was the guy they told to go home or something. Who’s this guy?
I was a senior in hs at the time. I remember it all over TV and just being shocked.
I hope he find peace
The emotional betrayal felt by people when they learn that their friend is or did something monstrous can often be overlooked, but in its way it’s a unique form of loss.
The realization that not only have you lost a friendship, but it’s very possible that you *never truly had one,* has to be worked through in much the same way as “standard” grief.
This was an event that shook America to its core, and most of us really assumed we’d have stricter gun laws as a result. How stupid we were to think anything would change.
Holy shit. I’ve never seen this picture before. This is what true agony and heartbreak looks like. I very much hope he’s found a way to avoid survivors guilt or any kind of guilt surrounding the events and found happiness later in life. Looked him up for a bit but didn’t find much.
I feel like I’d crawl into the bottom of a bottle and never make it out if this happened to me and I didn’t get help immediately.
I was a junior at a HS just 30 minutes north of Columbine when it went down. It was crazy watching it unfold. Even crazier watch my friend get arrested in the field next to school. We were all going “Is that Akard? That can’t be? And is that… is that Jim Brunetti, too? Oh, shit! It is them! I wonder if Allison knows!?!”
Holy shit, I’ve never seen this pic before
Can you imagine if the US had banned assault rifles and showed they cared about school shootings like other countries at the same time frame did. Those countries haven’t had school shootings at all pretty much. Apparently only thoughts and prayers for the youth in the US though.
Damn, he got the “don’t come to school tomorrow” message before he could even have known what that meant.
Man that would be heartbreaking
One of the worst days in your life enacted by some of the most important people in your life
Red Foreman standing tall.
Lot of people here talking about the news painting them as loners and such. Even if they were psychopaths or whatever, this person viewed THEM as his friends. Tragic
Guys I’m so glad we learned from this and it was the last school shooting ever. Imagine if we hadn’t enacted those common sense gun control laws. We’d probably be having shootings all the time.
This happened on my 16th birthday. I remember coming home from passing my driver’s test absolutely elated, only to turn on the TV and watching this unfold. There was so much hope that something would be done to prevent it, but yet here we are, stuck in the same cycle.
How’s he doing today?
I grew up mostly in a small suburb near Portland, OR that no one has heard of outside of the area. Moved to southern California for grad school and stayed for work after. When I saw a headline down there about a murder/suicide that actually mentioned my hometown by name, I remember thinking “man, I hope no one I know was involved.”
Turned out that one of my buddies from high school had shot and killed his ex-gf, whom I also knew from high school, before turning the gun on himself. That was a pretty bad day.
That officer looks like Red Forman
Red Foreman, Police Officer
They had friends? The news reporting at time painted them as loners and weirdos, and also hid the fact they were radicalized by racist propoganda online.
Cop looks like Robert Duvall in colors.
Awkward day to wear your camo pants to school.
Did anyone re-upload that REALLY good documentary that was like 7 hours long from a youtuber who retired?
This would be even more traumatic if their last words to him were, “See you at school tomorrow.”
Jesus that’s rough
I would have been mortified too if I found out my friends were mass murderers. That’s one of the worst feelings in the world.
Robert Duvall arresting Nate Diaz for weed in Nebraska.
Holy cow! I thought that cop in the photo was Robert Duvall.
Was the camera man listening through a boom mic across the highway?
Yeah, I can’t imagine the pain. You get relationship and you find out they are monsters. He shouldn’t feel guilty, but it definitely fuck you up in the future. He will definitely have trust issues