Months before two students at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado killed one student and wounded eight others, a parent had told the school she was worried the school’s climate would result in another Columbine.
Columbine High School, where 13 students and faculty died and another 21 were wounded in a 1999 mass shooting, is only seven miles away from the STEM school.
9News reports the parent’s concerns were written into a letter by Daniel Winsor, director of choice planning at Douglas County School District, and sent to STEM School Executive Director Penelope Eucker in December.
In the letter, Winsor said the parent — who wanted to remain anonymous — said, “many students are suicidal and violent in school” and the “high pressure” environment at the school was a “perfect-storm” that could lead to “a repeat of Columbine or Arapahoe.”
A student armed with a machete, three Molotov cocktails, and a pump-action shotgun killed Arapahoe High School student Claire Davis before killing himself in a 2013 shooting.
Eucker told 9News an investigation was opened to look into the allegations, but found “no evidence to support any of the allegations raised in the anonymous complaint,” which also included board members embezzling money and laundering it in China and Mexico and forcing students to clean up human feces with their bare hands.
She then filed a civil lawsuit against the anonymous caller for making “defamatory statements” and sent a letter to parents denying the allegations.
