Eric Harris

Eric David Harris was born on April 9, 1981 in Wichita, Kansas and died on April 20, 1999 in the Columbine High School library. Eric was the youngest of two sons born to Kathy and Wayne Harris. At the time of his death, Eric's older brother, Kevin Harris, was 21 years old.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 students and one teacher at Columbine High School and directly injured twenty-one people. Their plan was to explode two 4.5-gallon LPG (propane) canisters in the cafeteria and shoot survivors as they fled. When their bombs failed to detonate, they stormed the school with two sawn-off shotguns, a 9mm semi-automatic Hi-Point rifle, and an Intratec DC9M semi-automatic pistol.

Eric's father was an Air Force pilot, which meant his family had to move frequently. These frequent moves had a negative impact on Eric and he lamented in his writings about always having to start over as the new kid in school.

In 1993, while stationed in Plattsburgh, New York, Wayne Harris was forced to retire because of cutbacks. A Colorado native, Wayne moved his family to Littleton, Colorado in July.

Eric's life before moving to Colorado

Eric played Little League baseball in Plattsburgh, NY, but he was an exceptionally timid player. His coach, Terry Condo, said, "he was afraid to strike out and let his teammates down. It struck me as him really wanting to fit in."

Eric's new life begins in Colorado

Eric began attending Ken Caryl middle school in 1993, where he met Dylan Klebold long before the pair had plans to blow up the school. Although Eric was smart, he wasn't in the gifted program (CHIPS) like Dylan.

While attending Columbine High School, Eric would walk to school with his neighbor and classmate, Sarah Pollock. She remembers him being a nice kid, very polite, but a bit "preppy" and a "dork."

Sophomore year at Columbine High School

It wasn't until his sophomore year that Eric began to have problems at school with other students treating him poorly and administrators who allowed the mistreatment to continue.

Friends noticed a change in Eric during his sophomore year. One classmate, Ryan Whisenhut, said Eric liked him freshman year and stopped talking to him sophomore year. "He just sort of changed," Ryan said. "He gave you this look like he could kill you."

Blackjack Pizza

At the end of their sophomore year, Eric and Dylan started working at Blackjack Pizza where they spent slow nights setting off fireworks and homemade explosives behind the store with co-workers, including manager Kim Carlin. Although, most of the time the explosives were relatively harmless dry ice bombs. The store's owner, Bob Kirgis, often participated.

"We used to make dry ice balls behind the store," said Carlin. "You just put dry ice and hot water in a 2-liter bottle. It just shoots up. We stole a cone one time when they did road construction in the parking lot. We would see how high we could shoot the cone."

While Eric kept the explosives at work harmless, sometime around July 4, 1997, Dylan brought a pipe bomb into work and was written up. Not long after, Dylan quit.

Eric worked as a cook earning $7.65/hour. Fast forward to April 16, 1999 - four days before the massacre - when Eric was promoted to shift manager by the new owner, Chris Lau. With his promotion came a $200 advance for his March 8-April 18 pay period, which he used to fund supplies for the massacre.

Other TCM associates who worked at Blackjack Pizza:

• Brian Sargent
• Charles (Chuck) Phillips
• Chris Morris
• Nate Dykeman
• Phil Duran
• Robert Perry
• Zach Heckler

The bullying started sophomore year

At work, Eric often complained of being bullied. His co-workers and classmates, Kim Carlin and Sara Arbogast, couldn't figure out why people didn't like Eric. "No one ever gave him a chance," Kim said. "People always looked at me because I would go over and hug him in the morning."

Sara never saw Eric being harassed, but she saw people give Eric weird looks and figured it was because he was now dressing in black cargo pants and black t-shirts. Eric and Sara had a fun friendship, and he would always call Sarah "Ohzay bobo," a funny phrase he got from the comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

Both Sara and Kim enjoyed Eric's company and thought he was cute. When Eric complained about looking stupid in his senior photos, Sara and Kim told him he was cute and helped him choose his prints. However, when they invited him to hang out or go bowling, Eric often declined because he felt like he wouldn't fit in with the rest of their friends.

During junior year, on homecoming night, Eric went with Kim, Sara, and some other friends to the Old Spaghetti Factory in downtown Denver. When Kim and Sara came to pick up Eric, his mom wasn't home yet and he didn't want her to worry about him being gone. He made them wait about ten minutes until she came home so he could tell her where he was going.

Junior year at Columbine High School

When his junior year ended, Eric worked at Tortilla Wraps until September 1998 with Nate Dykeman and Chad Laughlin. His shift supervisor, David Cave (also a CHS student) described Eric as a "really good worker" and nice to the customers. He said Eric was quiet and never lost his temper at work.

Cave said Eric always dressed appropriately for work and it was Nate Dykeman who wore his black trench coat to work. Nate was promoted to shift manager, but quickly demoted for closing the store two hours early. Nate claimed he closed the store because he was dehydrated.