In 2015 , journalist Malcolm Gladwell writing in '' The New Yorker '' magazine proposed a threshold model of school shootings in which Harris and Klebold were the triggering actors in " a slow-motion , ever-evolving riot , in which each new participant 's action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before . " The first copycat may have been the W. R. Myers High School shooting , just eight days after Columbine , when a 14-year-old Canadian student went into his school at lunchtime with a sawed-off .22 rifle under his dark blue trench coat , and opened fire , killing one student . A month after the massacre , Heritage High School in Conyers , Georgia had a shooting which Attorney General Janet Reno called a Columbine " copycat " . A friend of Harris and Klebold , Eric Veik , was arrested after threatening to " finish the job " at CHS in October 1999
W. R. Myers High School shooting
W. R. Myers High School shooting
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold