Sheriff Won't Answer New Questions About Columbine Investigation

Taped Dispatch Conversation Suggests Relationship With Harris

Jefferson County sheriff John Stone again declined to answer 7NEWS' questions Tuesday about evidence that suggests police may have had a relationship with Columbine gunman Eric Harris.

Sheriff Won't Answer Questions
Listen To The Taped Conversation One major question centers on a dispatch conversation from the day of the attack that 7NEWS first brought to light on Monday. Sgt. Dave Baldwin: "The suspect... he's supposed to be still in the school shooting people, he's wearing a, he's an 18-year-old wearing all black. Uh, that's all we have at this time." Sgt. Rich Millsapps: "Is this the sheriff's guy?" Baldwin: "Yes." Millsapps: "Okay." Baldwin: "Okay." Sheriff Stone would not answer 7NEWS' question about what "the sheriff's guy" meant in this conversation. Other questions have surfaced, as well. A year before the attack on Columbine, Randy and Judy Brown called the sheriff's department to report threats, they said, that Harris was making against their son. The Browns also told the sheriff's department about pipe bombs and threats Harris was making on his Web site. An investigation was launched and a search warrant was drawn up. But then, without explanation, the whole thing was dropped. "There's not a doubt that April 20th was totally preventable if they had simply done their jobs, if they had simply pursued the search warrant," Randy Brown said. District Attorney Dave Thomas wrote the Browns to tell them that he couldn't find any paperwork on the case. "Why did the sheriff's department drop the original investigation, and what happened to the rest of the paperwork on the case? The department's own policies say that they should have it," 7NEWS reporter Julie Hayden said. More was learned about the Harris pipe bomb investigation after a media lawsuit forced the release of the search warrant affidavit. For more than a year before that, though, the sheriff and his department denied that any such investigation or document existed. "The question is, why did they apparently lie?" Hayden said. "These are legitimate, straightforward questions. The biggest one has become, why won't Sheriff Stone and his department answer them?" Hayden said. Previous Stories: