Profile: Colorado school gunman

Morrison had a criminal record

BBC News profiles the Colorado drifter identified as the gunman in the Platte Canyon High School siege in the US.

Duane R Morrison, 53, had no known previous connections to Platte Canyon High when he arrived there just before noon armed with a semi-automatic pistol and a revolver, according to police accounts.

His face meant nothing to some students who passed him as he sat in his jeep in the car park shortly before he entered the school - until they saw it again, in a police photo, on the news the next day.

The car windows were rolled up and the back of the jeep was filled with junk, they were quoted as saying by Colorado newspaper the Rocky Mountain News.

"He just stared at us and went back to looking at the school," student Roman Tucker recalled.

"He looked really mad."

Criminal record

Details of Morrison's past life were scant in the hours after the siege but it has emerged that he had a criminal record for relatively minor offences.

State records show he had criminal convictions for theft and marijuana possession dating back to 1973 and in July he was arrested for obstructing police in west Denver.

As the local sheriff reported that some of the hostages had apparently been sexually abused, there was no immediate indication of a history of sexual offences involving the dead man.

Sheriff Fred Wegener said Morrison was from the Denver area but had recently been living in his car.

One student, Jessica Montgomery, described for The Associated Press news agency seeing a "creepy" man with acne and stubble on his face in a second-floor hallway inside the school.

Morrison's stepmother Billie Morrison, who lives in Oklahoma, told AP that the last time she had seen him was "three to four years ago".

She had "no record of him [having been in] any trouble before", she said.

Morrison spoke to siege negotiators but made few demands other than "leave me alone" and "get out of here", Sheriff Wegener said.