Two suspects have been identified in the Colorado school shooting that left one student dead and wounded eight others: an 18-year-old man and a juvenile who has not been identified.
Joining Boston Public Radio with her analysis was homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem. Kayyem is on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School and a CNN analyst.
Kayyem believes the shooting is connected to the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, where two high school students murdered 12 other students and one teacher. The site of the recent shooting, STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado, is located just eight miles away from Columbine. A woman was also found dead in April after authorities suspected she was traveling to Columbine to commit a copy-cat killing.
"Unfortunately this is the legacy of Columbine that has generated this sort of mysticism about the two murderers, the two teenage high school students," Kayyem explained.
"Over the years there's been a sort of cult of the two of them that has bred all this madness that we see around anniversaries now," she continued.
Kayyem said investigators must now look into how the two suspects were able to obtain the weapons they used to commit the shooting, as neither was legally old enough to purchase them.
"The major lesson of course is that we are too armed of a society. I'm really curious how this kid got this weapon — he is, of course, an 18-year-old," she said.
