The Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Basketball Diaries” emerged last night as possible inspiration for the Colorado high-school slaughter.
It’s the second time the raw 1995 movie, based on Jim Carroll’s autobiography, has been implicated in school shootings.
Families in West Paducah, Ky., have filed a $130 million suit, saying the movie inspired a 1997 school shooting rampage at Heath HS there.
In the movie, DiCaprio plays a former high-school basketball star who descends into a tragic lifestyle of drugs and crime.
In one particularly disturbing scene, his drug-addicted character has a dream sequence in which he guns down teachers and classmates at school.
Witnesses in yesterday’s shooting at Columbine HS in Littleton, Colo., said the gunmen wore long, black trench coats like DiCaprio wore in the movie and may have been members of what students called the Trench Coat Mafia.
Educators and police say it’s too early to say for sure what inspired the latest high-school killing spree.
But families of the three victims in Kentucky blame the movie’s makers for that incident.
Michael Carneal, a 14-year-old freshman at Heath HS, said his decision to take six guns to school and attack a prayer group, killing three girls and injuring five others, was partly influenced by watching “The Basketball Diaries,” the suit says.
Also named in the lawsuit are Seagram and Sony, makers of ultra-violent video games like Doom, Quake and Redneck Rampage, which Carneal also enjoyed playing, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit, filed last week, is seeking $30 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages from the companies. They have declined to comment on the case.
Carneal pleaded guilty, but mentally ill, and was sentenced to life in prison.