Anne
Marie Hochhalter, 17 in 1999.
Anne Marie was outside on the grassy knoll she saw students getting shot in
the legs, she realized it was for real. She tried to run to the safety of the
cafeteria and
was shot by one of the gunmen [Eric
Harris], once in the back and once in the chest. Paralyzed by a bullet
that damaged her spinal cord and diaphragm (it was later found lodged in her
liver), she collapsed, unable to move.
Valeen
"Val" Schnurr, 18 in 1999.
Valeen was in the library during the shootings. When the shooters
entered the library, all she could see was their legs. She heard them yell at
Isaiah Shoels
and then shoot a couple of people before one of the shooters [Dylan
Klebold] moved over to her table. He
shot beneath it, injuring her and Lisa Kreutz. He fired again, as fast as
his gun would shoot, this time
killing Lauren. Val fell out from under the table, realizing only then
that her stomach and abdomen were hurt. Panicking, Val repeatedly cried out:
"Oh, my God! Help me!"
Val suffered nine soft tissue wounds to her left arm, chest, and abdomen from
shrapnel and through-and-through bullet wounds. she was released from Swedish
April 27.
Lisa
Kreutz, 18 in 1999.
In the library she She hid under the table she was at when
Patti Nielson came through and told the room to do so,
joining her friends and another girl [Kelly
Fleming].When the shooters entered the library she heard one say: "Are you
still with me? We're still gonna do this, right?" . Then the shooting
began inside the library, setting the fire alarm off. The girls pulled the
chairs in closer to the table to hide behind but that didn't stop the bullets
when [Dylan Klebold] began
to shoot under their table. Lisa's right wrist was grazed by a stray bullet.
She heard the "Do you believe in God?" exchange between Valeen
Schnurr, which occurred about the same time that [Dylan] fired again under
the table where Lisa was still hiding. She was hit several times, sustaining
multiple gunshot wounds to shoulder, hand and both arms. She lay bleeding in
the library for 2 1/2 hours, unable to move due to the severity of her
injuries, before she was rescued by officials onscene.
Jeanna
Park, 18 in 1999.
Jeanna was hiding under the table \when the shooters entered the
library. When Valeen was flushed out from under the table she heard one
of the gunmen ask her if she believed in god and later told investigators she
knew it wasn't Dylan Klebold
because she knew his voice from sharing a class with him before. There was a
moment of silence afterward and Val crawled back under the table. Immediately
the shooting resumed and Jeanna was shot from behind. She was hit in the right
knee, right shoulder and left foot, and fell to the floor where she stayed
until she noticed some of the other people in the library getting up and
leaving.
Joyce Jankowski, 45 in 1999.
When the shooting began Joyce, a teacher at Columbine, was in the faculty
lounge about to have lunch. When Nick came in, Joyce heard him
say: "Oh my God, I saw some kid's face get shot off, and I got hit!" She
told investigators that Nick took off his shirt but she didn't remember
seeing any injuries. She was treated for injuries sustained in the fall
through the ceiling when she tried to escape the school and was released
April 20, 1999.
Stephanie Munson, 17 in 1999.
Stephanie and her friend Melissa Walker were heading out of tech lab class to
go talk with one of the A.C.E. teachers when she heard popping noisesStephanie
felt as though
her left foot exploded: There was a burning sensation and a pop, then her
foot went numb.
Patricia
'Patti' Nielson, 35 in 1999.
Patti was on hall monitor duty when she she saw a male student at the west end
of the hallway with a gun. She asked another student [Brian
Anderson] who was passing by what was going on and he told her he thought
the other student was probably "shooting a movie", and that the gun was
probably a prop cap gun since he knew the student in question (later Patti
overheard [Brian] telling another teacher his name was
Eric Harris and knew he was
in the video productions class. Patti didn't think it was right to have a gun
in the school, pretend or not, and went to confront the student. She had just
passed through the first set of double doors where the student, [Eric
Harris], was at when he fired the weapon toward the outside. He then
turned and, seeing her and [Brian], smiled and shot at them as well. He
missed, hitting the glass doors behind them. Patti was hit with broken glass
and shrapnel. Screaming "Dear God! Dear God! Dear God!" in terror, she turned
to run. She saw [Brian] get shot in the back as he moved to retreat with her
but he was able to keep running with her the opposite direction from the
shooter, toward the library.
Once in the library Patti
ran to the phone at the circulation desk and dialed 911.
"What do we have here?" She heard them use the racial slur "nigger" and
then heard them shoot someone. During the ordeal in the library she heard them
call someone "fat boy", and at a later point heard one of the girls cry out
"Oh God!" and then heard one of the gunmen ask her if she believed in God. She
then heard him call her "awful and hateful names". More gunfire followed.
Eventually the shooters went to leave but one of them [Dylan] paused near the
circulation desk, saying: "Wait a minute! There's one more thing!" then he
smashed a chair on top of the desk. After that she heard one of them say:
"Let's go down to the commons."
Jennifer Doyle,
17 in 1999.
After lunch Jennifer went to the library, passing by the tech lab on her way.
She sat at a table where Mark Kintgen was already seated.
When investigators asked her who else was in the library at the time, she was
able to identify Val Schnurr, Lisa Kreutz,
Lauren
Townsend, and Jeanna Park. She was sitting at her
table when [Patti Nielson] and [Brian
Anderson] entered. She took the teacher's commands to get under the tables
seriously as she could see that Brian was injured. She was going to get under
the table she shared with Mark but, concerned that it wasn't big enough to
hide her, she ran to a table toward the back of the library where she hid with
Austin Eubanks and
Corey DePooter.
Corey told her and Austin that everything was going to be all right, trying to
encourage them and stop them being scared.
At one point she heard one of the gunmen ask very close to her location:
"What's your name?" and the person he was addressing answered: "John Savage."
The shooter then said: "Oh, we know you. Get out of here." Jennifer thought
perhaps the police had showed up and were letting people go but then suddenly
one of the two gunmen pulled a chair out from under the table where she was
hiding and saw the shooters, and saw Dylan holding a shotgun.
She looked at her hand and saw it was injured so she wrapped the end of
Corey's shirt around it. She noticed then that there was blood flowing along
Corey's left side and heard him take his last breath.
Jennifer took three shotgun pellets to the right hand: One crushed her ring
finger, another entered her wrist, and another entered the back of her hand,
resulting in seven broken bones.
Kacey Ruegsegger, 17 in 1999.
Kacey was in the library reading when the shooting began. When the call went
out for everyone to get down, Kacey hid under one of the small tables in the
southern bank of computer tables, and pulled a chair in front of herself. One
of the gunmen stood in front of where she was hiding and told everyone with a
white hat to get up so he could shoot them.
She heard the gunmen make a racial slur to someone, something along the lines
of: "Oh, a nigger. You're a dead black boy." When they shot the boy [later
identified as
Steven Curnow] who was hiding under the computer table next to her, she
put her head down and covered her ears with her hands. She was then shot in
the shoulder and when she cried out, the gunman who shot him told her to "stop
your bitching". She lay down then and pretended to be dead.
Kacey
remained under the table after the person who shot her moved away and she
continued to hear bangs, some of which she thought were bombs exploding. After
the gunmen left the room, two students tried to help her get out: [Craig
Scott], brother to victim
Rachel who
was killed outside, and a girl, [Sarah Houy]. Kacey was unable to move quickly
and was trampled by other students who were in a rush to leave the area. She
managed to make it out of the building and to the police waiting outside, then
was rushed off to the triage area.
Nicole
Nowlen, 16 in 1999.
Nicole had been attending Columbine for only seven weeks before the shooting.
She was assigned to "A" lunch but usually spent it in the library or an empty
classroom so she could do homework. She went to the library that day, and
found an empty table to sit at.
She then heard a male voice demand: "Everybody get up". She could hear the
gunmen "whooping and hollering" and laughing, along with several gunshots and
at least one explosion. It sounded to her as though the shooters were really
having fun. She heard the girls at a table near hers start to scream loudly
and "really freak out". She then heard one of the gunmen ask "Do you believe
in God?" and a female answer first "no" and then "yes" in a way that Nicole
thought she was trying to make sure she wouldn't get shot. The conversation
was followed by more shots.
The gunman [Dylan
Klebold this time] moved around the table and, standing over John, shot
him in the head. Her legs were touching his at the time and she felt his legs
start shaking, as though he were having convulsions. After a brief moment his
body went still.
The gunman moved around the table to where he'd been when he first opened fire
on their table and asked "Are you still breathing?". She didn't know who he
was talking to; to be safe she lay very still with her eyes closed and
pretended to be dead. At that point she lost consciousness.
Nicole was able to make her way over to Patti and they both left the library,
and were able to escape the school. She was taken by officers on scene to the
cul-de-sac where triage had been set up and from there was transported to the
hospital.