Chilling parallels with the horror and confusion of Columbine

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Ex-student kills 17 in school massacre

Expelled, and then he returned for vengeance

It was impossible to watch the drama unfolding in Erfurt yesterday without being reminded of the similar calamity that befell Columbine High School in Colorado almost exactly three years ago.

The similarities were chilling: reports of a gunman or gunmen, dressed in black, firing indiscriminately in corridors and classrooms; the arrival of emergency response teams; the tents set up for anxious parents; the television cameras; the frantic messages of help displayed by frightened teachers and pupils.

As in the Columbine tragedy – a landmark in horror even by the standards of America's frequent school shootings – initial reports were confused. Was there one gunman or two? Had the assailant been expelled, or was he in the school for a mathematics exam?

However, it would be a mistake to see too many parallels. The Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium is in an urban, relatively impoverished area; Columbine was in an affluent, ultra-conservative white suburb of Denver where it is easier for teenagers to get hold of lethal weapons than it is to buy a beer.

But if history is any guide, it could take months, maybe years, for the full story of what happened, and why, to emerge. In Colorado, they are still arguing about the causes, the police response and the investigation, as a string of lawsuits and petitions for public inquiries attest. There was scarcely a detail about the Columbine attack that did not, on closer examination, turn out to be distorted or wrong.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves, were not members of a campus "trenchcoat mafia" obsessed with the "satanic" music of Marilyn Manson and others. They were not white supremacists, even if their assault, on 20 April 1999, fell on Hitler's birthday. Their anger was not specifically directed at "jocks", the popular sports players who were at the top of the school's social hierarchy.

The factors that created these distortions are likely to find an echo in Erfurt: the voracious presence of the news media, making rational examination of the facts impossible; the distress among parents and students, who will tend to say too much too soon and then regret it; the tendency of "experts" to jump to conclusions about the assailant, the school and society; and the panic among school and law enforcement officials, terrified of taking the blame, who will try to "manage" information to show themselves in the best light.