Chris Morris
Christopher Richard Morris
Born: 6-9-1981
6 feet 4 inches, 175 lbs.

Christopher "Chris" Morris was a brown haired, blue eyed 17-year-old senior at Columbine High when the shootings occurred. He is a former friend (offsite link) of both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. He was close to both, though some described him as one of Dylan's best friends. Along with Nate Dykeman, Chris was a member of Harris and Klebold's bowling team in the class at Columbine. Chris, Eric, and Dylan also worked at Blackjack Pizza together for several months. Chris was eventually made a manager there.

In 1996, Tad Boles, a friend of Chris', got a new trench coat (offsite link) for Christmas. Roughly a week later, Chris got one, too. They started wearing their coats at school. A couple of kids there teasingly referred to them as the "Trenchcoat Mafia" and the name stuck. Rather than be hazed by the term, the boys claimed it and wore it proudly. Soon, most of Tad's friends were wearing similar coats, including Joseph "Joe" Stair. Neither Harris nor Klebold wore the coats at that time.

In 1997, Chris was a sophomore at Columbine when he met Harris and Klebold in Video Production class. They quickly become close friends, playing computer and video games, and bowling together. That same year, Chris started dating Nicole Markham, who was a year younger than him. He starts spending most of his free time with her instead of his old friends. Around this time, Dylan wrote a journal entry complaining about how his best friend was spending all of his time with a girl whom Klebold wishes would die. Dylan felt abandoned and compared his friend to being dead to him because of this.

Despite this, in 1998 Morris still went out and did "missions" with Klebold, Harris, Zach Heckler, and Brooks Brown. He also played pool with Klebold and Harris at their mutual friend Cory Friesen's house as late as 1999.

Chris worked at Blackjack Pizza starting in October 1996. By the fall of 1998, Harris, Klebold, Nate Dykeman, and Philip Duran all were working for the restaurant. Around the end of 1998, Chris stopped wearing his trench coat. It was around the same time that Dylan and Eric started wearing theirs. During one shift at the pizza place in November, 1998, Chris had to reprimand Dylan for bringing a pipe bomb into the kitchen. Roughly one month before the shootings, Eric brought a CO2 cartridge bomb he'd made to the restaurant and showed it to Morris. It was around that time that Chris started spending less time with Klebold and Harris, and more time with Cory Friesen, a Trench Coat Mafia member who had already graduated.

In the weeks preceding the shootings, Morris noticed that Harris seemed more aggressive than normal. He was picking fights with other people and seemed to expect Chris to back him up. It made him uncomfortable.

Chris' girlfriend Nicole was in the school at the time of the shootings. Chris had been off campus playing a video game with Cory at the Friesen residence. Cory's dad, Kent, was a teacher at the school. When they heard about the shooting, both teens tried to go to Columbine to locate their loved ones. Chris called 911 and told them that he thought Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold might be involved. Afterward, he went to Clement Park where police arrested him (offsite link) and took him away for questioning.

Investigators quickly cleared him of any wrongdoing. Chris offered to help the investigation in any way he could. Police took him up on the offer and had him call Philip Duran about the sale of one of the guns the shooters used. This phone call helped lead to Duran's arrest and imprisonment for selling a weapon to a minor.