25 years on, Columbine survivor Craig Scott works to stop other attacks, says faith gets him through

Craig Scott, a survivor of the mass shooting at Columbine High School that claimed his sister as its first victim, says mental health and spiritual issues were the root causes of the attack by two students 25 years ago.

Mr. Scott, who was 16 at the time, is a motivational speaker who speaks about his experiences to school groups and educational conferences “to help stop these school shootings from happening,” he told Billy Hallowell, host of The Washington Times’ “Higher Ground” podcast.

Two seniors at the Littleton, Colorado, school killed 12 students and a teacher on April 20, 1999, including Mr. Scott’s sister, Rachel. Gunshots wounded 21 other people, and three were injured as people scrambled to escape.

Police later said gunmen Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, died by suicide after their rampage.

Mr. Scott said the narrative of the shooting “set a bad precedent in our country” because the attack was quickly tied to allegations that the shooters had been bullied in school and turned to violence as a result.

“Everyone knows — that has really done any deep dive into Columbine — that [bullying] is not the reason that [the] shooting happened,” Mr. Scott said. “How they were treated was a smaller factor” in precipitating the rampage, he said.

Spiritual and mental health issues were at the heart of the Columbine attack, Mr. Scott said, adding that gun control is “not the main issue” in school shootings. 

The Columbine assailants, in a video never released publicly, said they wanted to start a “chain reaction” of similar incidents, something that has been fulfilled: ABC News reported this week that 415 people had been killed in school shootings and 907 wounded as of April 2. The network said 55 were mass shootings in which four or more people were killed or injured, excluding the perpetrator.

Mr. Scott said his sister wrote a paper a month before the shooting saying, “If one person will go out of their way to show compassion, it will start a chain reaction of the same, and people will never know how far a little kindness can go. She ends her paper by saying you just may start a chain reaction” of their own.

“My sister’s story is the largest story told in person in our public schools today, and it has been for the last 20 years,” Mr. Scott said. “This story [has] prevented school shootings from happening; it’s prevented thousands of suicides.”

Mr. Scott said making a choice to have faith has helped him persevere in the decades since that tragic day.

“My faith has definitely been the biggest thing that has helped me get through everything: times alone, quiet times,” he said. “I feel like it’s a gift that was given to me; I have my faith as a gift. And I grow in my faith in prayer, asking more of it.”