Last year's shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado leads to proposed legislation

State and federal lawmakers in Colorado on Monday went to Evergreen to call for changes to laws regarding how quickly social media and telecommunications companies have to respond to requests for information regarding credible threats.

"This is such a critical step in addressing that," Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat who represents Colorado's 7th Congressional District, which includes Jefferson County.

Currently, companies have up to 35 days to respond to FBI subpoenas and warrants. Pettersen's proposed "Evergreen Community Safety Act" would shorten that to 72 hours.

In the Evergreen High School shooting, the FBI got information from the Anti-Defamation League which monitors online threats, July 5, reporting that there was someone online who was engaging with extremist content and commented on mass shootings.

Jefferson County Sheriff Reggie Marinelli said the FBI sought and received three warrants to locate the person. The first was a search for the IP address of the person making the postings, then additional warrants seeking more information including the email and home address of that person. That information was eventually obtained more than 70 days after the FBI was informed by the ADL. That was after the Evergreen High School shooting on Sept. 10, in which the 16-year-old shooter, Desmond Holly, severely wounded two classmates before taking his own life.

"Once the address was known in Jefferson County Colorado, the FBI would have been in contact with us and they would have worked in collaboration with us to go into that home and start to take action," said Marinelli. "Because of the time it took to get to those search warrants back, the shooting had already occurred."

In addition to Petterson's proposed bill at the federal level, state Rep. Tammy Story said she would propose companion legislation at the state level.

"We are choosing to prioritize that safety of our students and teachers over the administrative convenience of billion-dollar corporations. We owe the people of Evergreen nothing less," said Story.

Pettersen said she was seeking bipartisan support, from her Republican colleagues from Colorado, but there was no backing yet. She is also proposing two other laws, one to fund grants for safe firearms storage boxes for community members and another to fund training for law enforcement, teachers and health care workers in extreme risk protection orders known as red flag laws.

Parents who attended Monday's news conference listened to the proposal. Evergreen High PTSA President Cindy Mazeika supported it.

"There's no reason to wait for 35 days for any kind of data," said Mazeika, who currently has one child at Evergreen High School. Mazeika also works as a director of customer security assurance with a software company.

"I'm a cybersecurity expert, it's my job. I know that data's there. And I know that they were just trying to protect themselves," said Mazeika who said pulling the data would take, "Less than a minute."

At the news conference, Marinelli also addressed questions about the shooter's parents, who chose not to speak to investigators and sent a message through a lawyer about ownership of the gun four months after the shooting in January, saying it had belonged to a maternal grandparent and had been stored in a safe that only the teenage shooter's father had access to.

"It would have been ideal to have those parents talk to us," said Marinelli. "It would have been ideal to have them talk to us during the investigation. Unfortunately, they chose not to. That's a decision only they can make. We cannot force them to speak to us. I would still love for the opportunity for my staff to speak with them if they were willing to come forward and do so."

Families of Evergreen High School students have expressed frustration.

"If it's one thing we would really appreciate is a, 'I am so sorry that this happened,'" said Mazeika. "They're not even taking accountability and I understand that they lawyered up and that's their rights, but it's not helping the community heal. It's not providing answers because I know that they have some kind of answers."

Attending the news conference was an uncle of Matthew Silverstone, the student who suffered lifelong injuries in the shooting. He did not comment. Evergreen High School's Student Government co-President Tyler Guyton addressed the crowd and received applause.

"Many of us still struggle to focus in class. Several of us leap when a notebook drops to the floor, or a door slams," he said.

"While none of us can regain our innocence or our childhood, there is something that gives me hope," he said of the community support the students had received.

"We all share a story from that day. Some of us have worse stories than others. Some of us have more trauma than others," he explained after the event. "We're just kids. We're grateful for the legislators and the politicians that have gotten some of us involved in it, but at the end of the day all we can really do is share our story."