Student's suicide leaves Columbine to grieve again

A week after observing the first anniversary of the Columbine school massacre, students and teachers were grieving yesterday for a star basketball player who committed suicide at his home.

Six counsellors were at the school to offer help, and supply teachers were on call to fill in for staff members who wanted to stay at home, said the Jefferson County School District spokesman, Rick Kaufman.

"It's a sombre mood at Columbine High School," Mr Kaufman said. He did not know how many students were absent, but said it was "a fair number".

The death on Thursday of Columbine pupil Greg Barnes, who was 17, was the latest tragedy to strike the school. A source said he had hanged himself.

Mr Kaufman confirmed the death, but declined to give details. "We are bound by legal constraints of what the coroner was going to release," he said. "I can tell you it did not happen at school, it did not involve guns, and the student was in school last year on April 20."

He was referring to the day when two students at the school in the Denver suburb of Littleton shot and killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher and wounded 23 others. The killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, then turned their guns on themselves.

Last month parents of their victims condemned the decision by a local county lawyers' office to put on sale the official scene-of-the-crime video.

The sheriff's office and the Jefferson County coroner de clined to provide additional information about Barnes's death. "Some things should remain confidential to the family," the coroner, Nancy Bodelson, said.

College basketball coach Rudy Martin met his players at the Barnes home following the death.

"I didn't know what to tell them," Mr Martin said. "I don't know what to tell my own kids. For two years, their hero has been Greg Barnes."

He said he had no inkling that Barnes was suicidal. "He stopped in and talked almost every day," Mr Martin said.

Barnes told Sports Illustrated magazine last year that he saw teacher and coach Dave Sanders, who died in the rampage, "take two shots, right in front of me". He said that he was in a science room and saw Sanders get shot through a window in the door.

Barnes was also a good friend of one of the dead students, Matt Kechter.

"We're really praying for his family," said Kechter's mother, Ann. "We know how incredibly painful this is going to be for his family and what they're going to have to go through."

But grief counsellors cautioned against automatically linking Barnes's death to the Columbine shootings, or to other tragedies that followed, including the suicide of an injured student's mother and the fatal shooting of two Columbine sweethearts in a sandwich shop.

"It's important that we recognise these things as separate incidents," said Tom Olbrich of the Jefferson Centre for Mental Health.

Barnes, who was 6ft 5in tall, led Columbine's basketball team into the semifinals of the state championship.

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