Features

Police say student had Columbine fascination

The Associated Press
Thursday February 01, 2001

SAN JOSE — The young man who allegedly assembled an arsenal of guns and explosives in his room and plotted a massacre at his community college was fascinated with the 1999 rampage at Columbine High School and “hated everyone,” police said Wednesday. 

Amid the 30 pipe bombs and 20 Molotov cocktails stashed under clothes and in duffel bags in Al DeGuzman’s messy bedroom, investigators found magazine articles about the Columbine killers, writings worshipping them and pictures of them on the wall, Sgt. Steve Dixon said. 

DeGuzman, 19, allegedly planned for two years to kill fellow students in De Anza College’s cafeteria and library, modeling the attack on the one in Littleton, Colo., in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and wounded 23 others before committing suicide. 

“Eric Harris is God,” DeGuzman allegedly proclaimed on one Web site. “He’s my savior.” The pages have been taken down by its administrator. 

“According to the friends we talked to, he was getting weird,” said Deputy Police Chief Mike Miceli. “The common thing was that he talked a lot about Columbine. He was fixed on Columbine.” 

While the specific motive remained unclear, investigators found troves of angry writings on DeGuzman’s computer. DeGuzman, who is of Filipino descent, lashed out against politicians, social classes and people of all ethnic groups – including his own, police said. 

“He hated everyone,” Miceli said. 

The new details of the investigation emerged as DeGuzman sat in jail awaiting a court appearance Thursday on more than 50 weapons and explosives counts. His family did not answer requests for comment, and DeGuzman’s lawyer could not be located. 

The plot allegedly unraveled Monday night after a clerk in a drug store photo-developing department alerted police to snapshots of DeGuzman posing with his arsenal, including the Molotov cocktails that seemed to be in dark apple juice bottles. 

“I was looking at it probably for three and five minutes just staring at it trying to make out who this person was, why was he taking pictures of these black gloves, black pants, black belts,” said the clerk, Kelly Bennett, whose father is a San Jose police officer. “I thought, ‘This guy is weird.”’ 

DeGuzman was arrested when he came in to pick up the photos Monday night, forcing De Anza College in nearby Cupertino to shut down Tuesday morning, the day the attack was allegedly planned for. 

De Anza reopened Wednesday, and police said they had determined no one else was involved in the plot. 

Despite his alleged affinity for Harris and Klebold, DeGuzman was no trench coat-wearing loner. DeGuzman had no criminal record, and many people who knew him said he was clever and smart, likely to become an engineer. 

In his senior year at Independence High School in 1998-99, DeGuzman was one of five editors of the yearbook, which won national graphic design awards. 

“I would describe him as intelligent, creative,” said Paul Ender, who was the yearbook adviser. “He was on the shy side, but the kids really respected him and liked him. I certainly did, or he wouldn’t have been an editor of the yearbook — especially at the school, where the yearbook is a pretty major undertaking.” 

Ender recalled how DeGuzman would create fanciful sculptures with the design tools in his classroom. 

“I had to joke with him on Monday mornings, he had to take all this stuff apart so I could work with them,” Ender said. 

While most, if not all, of the other yearbook editors went off to four-year schools, Ender said he believed DeGuzman enrolled at De Anza and lived with his parents for financial reasons. 

DeGuzman’s parents told investigators they respected their son’s privacy and had no idea of what police would find: booby-trapped explosives, sophisticated timing devices and a sawed-off shotgun and rifle, both of which were legally purchased. The explosives were built with common items that could be found at many stores, and some of them were similar to ones used at Columbine, police said. 

Miceli said investigators “hit the gold mine” of evidence when they seized DeGuzman’s computer from his bedroom. They discovered detailed plans — including positions and corners at De Anza that bombs could be placed in and ways to distract police with bombs off campus, police said. 

“He was going to kill as many people as possible before he died,” Dixon said. “He seemed to think the more people he killed, the better it’d be, the more media attention.” 

Among the passages that police said gave them insight into DeGuzman’s thinking was this, from an America Online page: “I don’t seem to care about anything anymore except having a (expletive) of guns, liking people who are politically incorrect, revolution, and seeing people get the (expletive) kicked out of them.” 

Talk of the thwarted plot occupied the first 20 minutes of De Anza instructor Jennifer Myhre’s sociology classes Wednesday. She said many of her students were afraid that accomplices to the plan were still at large, and that many of those evacuated did not take the threat seriously at first. 

“You hear ‘bomb threat,’ and you think someone had a test and didn’t want to show up — like pulling a fire alarm,” Myhre said. “But here was someone who had a real well-thought-out plan. It was really unnerving.”