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Deputy Simmons, leader of the first S.W.A.T. team that entered the school on the east side, called for back up. The school covered 250,000-square-foot and had numerous rooms and hallways that had to be searched. It was full of students hiding, some injured and in need of assistance.

Two S.W.A.T. marksmen positioned themselves on the rooftops of houses on West Polk Avenue, the first street south of the school. From there, they had a clear view over the south car park, the cafeteria and the library windows.

Williams’ S.W.A.T. team moved into position at the north-west corner of the school, directly opposite the point where Simmons’ team had entered the building. They planned to make their way to the cafeteria and the library. But a bomb blocked the outside west doors to the upper level and the library and instead they had to enter by breaking the window of the teachers’ lounge, situated next to the cafeteria.

Inside they were met with the deafening noise of fire alarms and the flash of strobe lights from the burglar-alarm system. Tiles were hanging from the ceiling and water was pouring under the door to the cafeteria. Along with the noise of the sprinklers, there was a hissing sound, which Williams feared might be coming from a broken gas pipe. Quickly his team cleared the kitchen and back storage areas, evacuating the staff and students hiding there through the teacher’s lounge window. They evacuated another 60 students from the school’s music area on the second floor, and continued to work from west to east on the lower level while Simmons’ S.W.A.T. team worked from east to west on the upper.

Simmons’ S.W.A.T. team evacuated 30 students and faculty from south-facing classrooms on the upper level before meeting up with Williams’ team who had, by then, cleared the stairs to that level. The teams continued to receive warnings from the squads inspecting the diversionary bombs placed on Wadsworth that there could be similar devices planted throughout the school, and also received messages from the S.W.A.T. marksmen that there were more injured students on the upper levels, including one student who had hung a banner out of the window with ‘1 bleeding to death’ scrawled across it. A little later three males dressed in black clothing and matching the general description of the gunmen were arrested in a field north of the high school. They were not Columbine students and identified themselves as the ‘Splatter Punks’. They insisted they had shown up at Columbine High School out of curiosity. Cleared of any involvement in the shooting, they were released.

At 2.30, President Clinton was scheduled to make an announcement about the American economy. Instead he talked about Columbine.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we all know there has been a terrible shooting at a high school in Littleton, Colorado,’ he said. ‘Because the situation, as I left to come out here, apparently is ongoing, I think it would be inappropriate for me to say anything other than I hope the American people will be praying for the students, the parents and the teachers and we’ll wait for events to unfold and there will be more to say.’

In the library, Patrick Ireland, who had been shot, slipped in and out of consciousness. Nevertheless, he slowly made his way to the west window. Sergeant Domenico in the news helicopter spotted him trying to climb out of a broken window on the second floor. Below him was a concrete sidewalk. Deputies sent in an armoured vehicle with members of the Lakewood S.W.A.T. team, who caught the young man as he fell.

Williams’ S.W.A.T. team eventually reached the library where there were numerous bombs among the survivors. Among the 12 dead they found there were two males who had self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head. They matched the description of the gunmen.

By 4.45, the S.W.A.T. teams had finished their search of Columbine High School. The building had been cleared and the two suspects were dead. The massacre at Columbine was over. Between