A Florida woman, whose suspicious “fascination” about the Columbine massacre forced nearly half of all Colorado public school students to stay home on Wednesday, fatally shot herself, officials said. Police around the Mile High City had been scouring the area for Sol Pais, 18, who they say traveled from Miami to Colorado on Monday and was armed. FBI agents announced at 10:28 a.m. local time they were looking for Pais at the base of Mount Evans, just west of Denver and confirmed her death a short time later. "They have found Miss Pais deceased from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," said Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader, whose jurisdiction includes Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. "I don't believe that they were in active pursuit at the time she was found dead." Pais hadn't made any specific threats, but police had said she was potentially dangerous and was obsessed with the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School massacre in Littleton that left 12 students and a teacher dead. She bought a shotgun and ammunition from a gun shop near Littleton just days before the 20th anniversary of the shooting this week, authorities said. After traveling to Denver she went directly to the store to buy the weapon, an FBI official said. Hundreds of schools, with more than 400,000 students in and around Denver, canceled classes on Wednesday, because of the potential threat, officials said. That represented nearly half of Colorado's 911,000 public school students, officials said. Sol Pais. Jefferson County Sheriff's Office via AP "I'm very thankful this threat is over," said John McDonald, executive director for security and emergency management for Jefferson County Public Schools. "But we know Columbine continues to attract people from around the world. And if I have any message: We are not a place to come visit if you're not a student. If you don't have business there, we're not a tourist attraction and we're not a place for you to come and gain inspiration." McDonald described Pais' journey to Colorado as a "pilgrimage." "We are used to threats, frankly, at Columbine," McDonald said. "This one felt different. It was different. It certainly had our attention." Dean Phillips, FBI special agent in charge of the Denver field office, said at a news conference Wednesday that Pais’ body was found between 10:30 a.m. and 10:40 a.m., and she was last seen in the area on Monday after being dropped off by a "for-rent vehicle." Investigators don’t know why she chose that area, but the driver helped authorities pinpoint her last known location, he said. Phillips said it appears Pais was alone and killed herself with the shotgun she bought in the Denver area. Sheriff Shrader told MSNBC on Wednesday, a short time before Pais was found, that every April brings copycat threats to Columbine. But he said Pais' interest in the school stood out. "We do get a number of threats each April that come up and, obviously, with Columbine having its 20-year anniversary, it perhaps heightened some of those sensitivities," said Shrader, who was with his department back in 1999 when the mass shooting happened. "And in terms of the decision-making process, once it was learned the general nature of some of the comments that this person had made, coupled with buying a gun and coupled with this being the Columbine week and her fascination with it ... school superintendents were on a phone call late last night and they came to the conclusion that it would be best for their school districts if they closed schools today." Pais apparently kept an online journal signed with her full name and described how she felt miserable, along with thoughts of suicide and desire to gain weapons. The journal is dated June 2018 through March 30, 2019. “I wish I could get a gun by the end of the summer," according to one entry. She also made a drawing of one of the Columbine gunmen, Dylan Klebold. "Had a dream last night about the future and it was eye-opening. Was only a week away from the day and I had my [expletive] shotgun...” an entry reads, a possible reference to the shooting anniversary. Police and FBI agents had been looking for Pais, with orders to detain her for a mental health evaluation, authorities said. She was last seen wearing a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and black boots, officials said. In Pais' hometown of Surfside, Florida, Police Chief Julio Yero thanked the woman's family for their help in the search. "This family contributed greatly to this investigation from the very onset," Yero said. "They provided valuable information that led us to Colorado and a lot of things that assisted in preventing maybe more loss of life." In a brief interview with NBC Miami on Tuesday night, Pais father had begged his daughter to come home. He said the search for her had taken an emotional toll on the family. "It's like a bad dream," he said. "We don't know, we don't have any idea." Phillips, the FBI special agent in charge, said the investigation is ongoing. "The reason that we do that is we are trying to follow every lead, assess every social media outlet — everything that she may have done over the last several months to a year, to ensure that there are no accessories, that there are no accomplices that might be working with her,” Phillips said. "It's very important for us to ensure that there is no further threat to the Denver community.” Phillips also called the cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies “incredible” and said Wednesday "it was a long night." "The partnerships during this investigation, this trying 36 hours, was incredible," he said. "The federal partners, the state partners, the local partners all came together in an incredible manner and worked tirelessly to put this to bed," he said.<doc-sep>Sol Pais, the 18-year-old Florida woman who FBI officials said was “infatuated with Columbine” and whose presence in Colorado triggered hundreds of schools to close, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound off of a trail at the base of Mount Evans, Clear Creek County Sheriff Rick Albers said. Albers, who saw pictures of Pais’s body, said Pais was wearing camouflage pants and a black shirt, which authorities had released as part of her description on Tuesday. She was dead when law enforcement officials found her, he said. Pais was alone and a pump-action shotgun was found nearby, Albers said. Her body was removed from the Resthouse Trail near Echo Lake Lodge around 1:30 p.m. At a Wednesday afternoon news conferencing confirming Pais’s death, FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Dean Phillips said that Pais had arrived in Colorado Monday after buying three one-way airplane tickets for consecutive travel days. Immediately after arriving in Denver Tuesday morning, Pais went to a gun store that she had previously called and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition, Phillips said. “We know she was in contact with gun stores before she left,” he said. Once in Denver, Pais used ride-share services as transportation. A driver had helped law enforcement pinpoint Pais’s location near Mount Evans. The Denver FBI office learned about Pais’s arrival in Colorado from the agency’s Miami office, Phillips said. Her parents had called local police after she disappeared Monday and the local police contacted the FBI, he said. In Miami, school officials pledged to cooperate with law enforcement while classmates said they were surprised by her actions. After Pais’s death was announced, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools System said it had deployed mental health teams to the school. “We are disturbed about the events that have transpired and saddened by the heartbreaking outcome,” the school system said in a statement. Pais had made verbal comments to family and friends about Columbine and had posted her thoughts about the massacre in online forums and social media, he said. Still, no specific school or person was threatened. Schools across the state were closed as a precaution because the threats didn’t identify a specific school, Phillips said. “We had no specific information about a school that was targeted. The information was generalized,” he said. Josh Rayburn, the owner of Colorado Gun Broker, which is near Columbine High School, confirmed in a Facebook post that Pais had purchased the gun at his shop. Officials are not sure exactly when Pais arrived at Mount Evans, including whether she spent the night on the mountain. During a morning news conference, Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Schrader said officials believe she was using ride-share services for travel. Nikay Webb, who lives in a neighborhood outside Idaho Springs, said she had seen a woman matching Pais’s description — slender, wearing cargo pants, boots and a black shirt — around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday as she was going to pick up a child from school. But she had not heard the bulletins that law enforcement was looking for a young woman wearing those clothes. At the school, she talked to other parents, who updated her on the situation. Webb then told federal agents that she had seen in the area about her sighting. The agents drove away to go search, she said. The Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office began following a lead from the FBI and citizens around 9 a.m., Albers said. They searched Echo Lake Lodge but it was empty. The sheriff’s office’s tactical team along with a partial FBI tactical unit then began searching nearby trails, and Pais was found at 10:50 a.m. about a half mile from the lodge, he said. Officials are in the process of confirming that the gun she used on herself is the same one she bought Tuesday in Colorado. Pais had traveled to Colorado on Monday night, made threats and was considered armed and “extremely dangerous,” the FBI said. Officials said she purchased a pump-action shotgun and ammunition shortly after leaving Denver International Airport. Rayburn, the gun shop owner, said his shop ran Pais through the required background checks and she was cleared by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. “We had no reason to suspect she was a threat to either herself or anyone else,” the Facebook post said. “We are very sorry to hear of the outcome in this situation. It is never good when someone loses their life. We are praying for her family. And are very thankful this situation did not escalate into a public tragedy.” Authorities believe she was acting alone and did not have any friends in the area, Schrader said during the Wednesday morning news conference. On Tuesday, authorities confirmed it was her presence that triggered lockouts — that’s when outer doors are bolted, but classes continue as normal — first at Columbine High School and more than 20 other Jefferson County institutions, then at dozens of other schools across the wider metro area. The threats came just days before the 20th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, during which two students shot and killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher. Most major Denver-area school districts — and others across the Front Range — had canceled classes Wednesday, including Denver Public Schools, Douglas County School District, Aurora Public Schools and Jeffco Public Schools. Superintendents from school districts across the Denver-metro area gathered for a call Tuesday night and collectively determined that the safest course of action would be to close schools on Wednesday. Even school districts as far away from Columbine as those in Weld and Larimer counties were closed Wednesday as a precaution. Farivar said the state, local and federal agents used every technological tool available to find Pais. Authorities repeatedly warned that she was armed and dangerous until they found her dead. Denver police conducted sweeps of schools looking for Pais. “As a precaution, Denver police officers have been directed to remain attentive around schools,” Marika Putnam, spokeswoman for the Denver Police Department, said Wednesday morning. Putnam said that Denver authorities were in constant contact with federal, state and local law enforcement officials. Prior to Wednesday, Pais last had been seen in the Jefferson County foothills on Monday night wearing a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and black boots, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office reported in an alert. She was described as being 5-feet-5 with brown hair. “We’re looking for her everywhere,” Mike Taplin, spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday morning. “We’re hoping to find her before any bad can be done. All the jurisdictions are working together and the FBI is the lead agency.” Editor’s note: Information from an anonymous source who said Pais was seen naked in the woods has been removed from this story. That information was never substantiated.<doc-sep>To many parents, the school closings and the frenzied manhunt drove fears that Columbine still had the power to captivate would-be attackers and that the community would never be free from the massacre, which took place on April 20, 1999, and left 12 students and one teacher dead. “What does this mean for tomorrow and the next day?” asked Dana Gutwein, 34, who has a first grader and third grader in the Jefferson County Public Schools District, which includes Columbine. Ms. Gutwein was unsure whether she would immediately let her children go back to class when the hundreds of schools that had closed on Wednesday reopen. “I’ve felt like I’m on the verge of throwing up since this started,” she said. Across the Denver metro area, parents struggled to find the right words to explain the latest safety warnings to children who have grown up in an anxious era of lockdowns and active-shooter drills. At Columbine, students who were organizing a day of service to mark the 20-year anniversary saw their preparations eclipsed by emergency text messages from the school district, news alerts on their phones and dread. “This week our message was supposed to be about love and recommitment,” said Rachel Hill, 17, a senior at Columbine. “But now all the news surrounding Columbine is about fear.” Some parents said they told their children to play close to home on Wednesday. Others shook their heads at how a threat from one teenager could keep half a million students home from school and throw an entire city into panic.<doc-sep>
The woman authorities said had “expressed an infatuation” with the 1999 Columbine High School shooting and whose threats prompted the Wednesday closing of many Denver-area schools has been found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities announced. Before her death, Florida woman Sol Pais, 18, had been described by authorities as being armed and “extremely dangerous.” At a Wednesday press conference after her death, Dean Phillips, the special agent in charge of the FBI Denver division, said she was found near Colorado’s Mt. Evans after a manhunt. Before she was found, on Tuesday night, Phillips said Pais had “expressed an infatuation with Columbine,” referring to the massacre in which 13 people were killed. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said that Pais had traveled to Colorado on Monday night and “made threats in the Denver metropolitan area.” The FBI Denver division said that the threats were “not isolated to one school or individual.” Pais’ threats came days before the 20th anniversary of the school shooting, which occurred on April 20, 1999. Pais bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition after arriving in Denver. She killed herself using that weapon, Phillips said. The Miami Herald reports that when she was wanted, a man answering the door at Pais’ home in Florida identified himself as her father and encouraged his daughter to come home. According to the outlet, he said he had lost contact with Pais on Sunday. “I think maybe she’s got a mental problem,” he said, according to the outlet. “I think she’s gonna be okay.” Many Denver metro area schools went into “lockout” on Tuesday. In a lockout, school continues as scheduled but all entryways and exists are restricted, according to the Jefferson County Public School district. Students were later deemed safe, and released at the normal time. Prior to news of Pais’ death, a statement on the Columbine High School website said that the high school was closed on Wednesday, along with all schools in the Jefferson Country district. Prior to Pais’ death, a statement to PEOPLE from the district-level Jeffco Public Schools said: “We — Jeffco Public Schools as well as Columbine High School — are deeply concerned about this threat. With our history, it brings up strong emotions from the entire community. We are focusing on working with our law enforcement and school safety partners to make sound decisions to keep our students and staff as safe as possible. As the situation progresses, all information about what is or is not happening in our schools will be posted on our website and social media.” 10208699g Police outside Columbine High School on Tuesday • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. Denver Public Schools were also closed on Wednesday. “Superintendents from school districts across the Denver-metro area gathered for a call Tuesday night and collectively determined that the safest course of action will be to close schools Wednesday, April 17,” a statement read.