The Columbine High School massacre, commonly referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten students were killed in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently committed suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history, until it was surpassed by the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. It is also the deadliest mass shooting in the state of Colorado. Harris and Klebold, who planned for at least a year and hoped to have a large number of victims, intended for the attack to primarily be a bombing and only secondarily a shooting. But when several homemade bombs they planted in the school failed to detonate, the pair launched a shooting attack. Their motive remains inconclusive. The police were slow to enter the school and were heavily criticized for not intervening during the shooting. The incident resulted in the introduction of the immediate action rapid deployment (IARD) tactic, which is used in active-shooter situations, and an increased emphasis on school security with zero-tolerance policies.