Details from Colo. school shooting emerge

One student's lie
Another student, Cassidy Grigg, also told the “Today” show and other media outlets of being inside the room when Morrison stormed in. But his mother on Thursday said the 16-year-old had lied and was actually in another room at the time.

Larina Grigg said her son told her he fabricated the story because he wanted it to be true. “He said, ‘Mom, all those kids were my friends and I just wanted so much to help them. ... I guess I just made it up in my mind. I just wanted it to be true so bad.”’

Morrison was arrested in July in the Denver suburb of Lakewood after he failed to appear on a 2004 harassment charge in Littleton, another suburb. He was also arrested on suspicion of larceny and marijuana possession in 1973.

“He’s a weird dude. It was a telephone harassment. He left some messages at a business in the city,” Littleton police Sgt. Sean Dugan said. He declined to release details of the charge, but said Morrison received a nine-day jail sentence in August that was suspended.

Gunman's relatives speak
At their home in Tulsa, Okla., Morrison’s stepmother said she and her husband, Bob Morrison, “have no record of him being, having any trouble before.”

“We just know the way he was raised,” Billie Morrison said, declining to elaborate. She said the last time she saw him was three to four years ago, she doesn’t know what prompted the violence in Colorado.

“We don’t know why,” she said. “We don’t know how.”

The sheriff, a 36-year resident of Bailey with a son at the high school and a daughter who recently graduated, paused when asked if he made the right choice to confront Morrison.

“You re-evaluate your decisions, but given the fact that he was victimizing — I should say sexually assaulting — the hostages, I felt I had to do something,” he said. “Given the information I had, I feel like I made the right decision.”

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