DENVER, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- The parents of four students slain at Columbine High School want federal investigators to answer one of the lingering questions about the deadly 1999 shooting.
The parents of student Daniel Rohrbough have long contended that their son was mistakenly shot and killed by a law officer, not killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. A teacher and 12 students were killed in the massacre, the worst school shooting in U.S. history.
At a news conference Wednesday, Rohrbough's parents and the parents of three other victims revealed a taped conversation made in 2000 with Arapahoe County Deputy Sheriff Jim Taylor that they believe supports their allegation, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reported.
Taylor was posted outside the school the day of the shooting.
"What I seen was a boy coming down the sidewalk you know, kind of running, you know, a fast trot, but there was 20 to 30 other kids around, you know, I don't even know the number," he said. "They were just running in mass chaos and I seen a boy drop and that's ... and that's ... I don't know who it was."
The deputy was asked if it was Daniel Rohrbough.
"It was Dan," Taylor replied, "and I didn't know that until I seen the photo the next morning in the newspaper that it was the boy that I seen."
Jefferson County sheriff's officers have denied that a law officer killed Daniel Rohrbough. They contend he was killed by Harris or Klebold in the first minutes of the shooting but the boy's body was later found outside the school.
On Monday, Arapahoe County Sheriff Pat Sullivan disputed the allegations of the Rohrbough family, issuing a statement in which Taylor denied being present at the location outside the school where Rohrbough died.
"I'm sorry for their loss," Taylor said. "It is not true that I saw Daniel Rohrbough get shot or any other person."
Sullivan said he wants to listen to the entire taped conversation with Taylor and compare that with the deputy's other statement. He said the deputy is the subject of an internal investigation but he has been a "very good deputy" since he was hired in 1988.
"For him (Taylor) now to come out and say he never said any of these things and he never witnessed any of these things is a bald-faced lie," Sue Petrone, Daniel Rohrbough's mother, said after playing the recording, the News reported.
She and the other victims' families asked that a federal grand jury be convened to look into Columbine because of the conflicting statements from law officers. They are also trying to revive lawsuits that were dismissed last year.
