The bullets hit a math whiz and a wrestler, debate team members and an aspiring gymnast, a beloved teacher and a gregarious student known in the halls as “the little guy.”
The jocks and the brains, the goofy freshmen and the cocky seniors, the slackers and the stars — almost everyone was in the line of fire when Columbine High School erupted into bloody chaos on Tuesday.
By the time the torrent of shooting had ended, Dave Sanders, a veteran business teacher and a coach of girls’ sports teams at Columbine, lay dying in a classroom, with gunshot wounds. Some students tried for more than an hour to staunch his bleeding with the T-shirts they had been wearing; others knelt down and showed him family photographs from his wallet.
And Isaiah Shoals, a buoyant 18-year-old senior hardly more than 5 feet tall, had been shot dead.
“He was so full of life, and he got along with everyone,” said Ashley Prinzi, a classmate. “He was so small, I don’t even know how all the bullets got him.”
Harold Berry, a longtime family friend who was at the Shoals’ home on Wednesday night, said Isaiah Shoals had suffered from heart problems since birth and this month had been hospitalized for five days. Monday was his first day back at school.
Berry also said Shoals, one of a small number of African-American students at Columbine, “was being racially abused” by a few students who were part of group known as the Trench Coat Mafia, which included the two assailants.
Some students said that when the shooting began, Sanders was rushing around the school’s cafeteria, ordering students to get beneath the tables.
“Coach Sanders came in and said, ‘Everybody get down! Get down!’ He was telling everyone to stay away from the windows,” said Brittany Davies, 15, a sophomore. “We could hear the gunman coming in. I knew he [Sanders] would get hurt because he was making sure everyone else was safe.”
The names and conditions of some victims cut down in the massacre were still not known on Wednesday.
Known to be among the wounded was Corey Depooter, 17, on duty as a library volunteer, and Brian Anderson, a junior who is a member of a campus leadership club called Family, Career and Community Leaders of America.
Anne Marie Hochholter, 17, a member of the school’s marching band and symphony, was shot in the chest.
Danny Steepleton, 17, an honors student who ran on the cross-country team, was shot in the leg.
Patrick Ireland — “that dude always totally aced his trigonometry tests,” is how his classmate Landon Jones described him — was shot twice in the head.
Makai Hall, a junior who friends said loved the adventure of rock-climbing on the weekends, was hit with shrapnel from a pipe bomb.
After the shootings, victims were taken to area hospitals, where they remained on Wednesday. Among them, Valeen Shnurr, 18, suffered shrapnel and bullet wounds and was listed in stable condition. Sean Graves, 15, underwent surgery Tuesday night and was listed in critical condition.
Richard Castaldo, 17, was listed in serious condition after being shot five times. “It is just unbelievable that this could happen,” said Castaldo’s half-brother, Michelac, 17, as he left the hospital.
From morning to night, students from Columbine and from across metropolitan Denver streamed onto the school’s grounds to mourn the victims — at least the ones they knew had been shot.
“We still don’t know what happened to a lot of people,” said Sarah DeBoer, 16, who narrowly escaped the gunfire as she fled the school. “I can’t stand it.”
