Columbine shooter’s mother says she thinks of victims daily

The mother of one of the Columbine High School shooters says in her first television news interview that she never suspected her son was capable of the violence he committed on April 20, 1999.

Sawyer’s special will air on all ABC News programs and platforms, including “Good Morning America”, “World News Tonight with David Muir”, “Nightline”, ABCNews.com, ABC News Radio and ABC NewsOne. The duo had planned for an epic spree with hundreds of casualties; the pair had also set several homemade bombs which failed to explode, sparing the lives of other classmates and first responders.

Sue and Tom Kelbold have said in the past that they had no idea their son and the second gunman, Eric Harris, were gathering weapons.

Klebold was asked one particular question countless times in the years following the shooting: How could she have missed the warning signs?

The broadcast comes ahead of the publication of Sue Klebold’s book, Silence Broken: A Mother’s Reckoning.

“I had all those illusions that everything was OK because, and more than anything else, because my love for him was so strong”, she says in the interview, according to a snippet released Thursday.

Addressing the interview, Hochhalter wrote, “I was contacted by ABC to comment for the 20/20 special and they told me that any proceeds from your book (aside from publisher’s costs) will go to helping those with mental illness”.

“I think we like to believe that our love and our understanding is protective, and that ‘if anything were wrong with my kids, I would know, ‘ but I didn’t know”, she said.

Before the shooting, Klebold said she had believed she was the kind of parent who would have noticed if something were amiss with her son. “And- it’s very hard to live with that”. Klebold said she wrote it because she feels “a moral imperative” to share the insights she has gleaned over the years “to help other families see the signs when their children need help”. She said her mother, who suffered from depression, took her own life after Columbine, which didn’t exclusively cause her problems but impacted her state of mind. “It’s been a rough road for me, with many medical issues because of my spinal cord injury and intense nerve pain, but I choose not to be bitter towards you”. I know I would.

“I have no ill-will towards you”.

Diane Sawyer reached out to the families and survivors prior to the interview, and reactions ranged from anger to forgiveness.