It was 12:20 p.m. Wednesday when Renee Corbino’s daughter, Summer, called her from geometry class.
“Mom, a bad man is shooting up the school,” Summer told her after hearing shots from a room down the hall.
For three hours, Renee Corbino couldn’t reach her daughter again.
“If the last time you talk to your child she says someone was shooting up her school, everything else just stands still,” Corbino said as she waited for a bus to drop off her daughter at Deer Creek Elementary School.
For Platte Canyon High School parents, Wednesday was a day filled with chaos and fear as television cameras seemed to replay scenes from the Columbine High School shootings on April 20, 1999.
Some worried from home or work. Those who could raced to the school, armed with cellphones and questions.
As the standoff dragged on, frantic parents searched for information about their children.
More than 700 kids were to be bused from Fitzsimmons Middle and Platte Canyon High schools.
Cheers erupted shortly before 3 p.m., when the buses arrived at the elementary school, the designated pickup spot. Parents waved joyfully, many shouting “I love you!” when they spotted their children.
Deer Creek’s principal, Paul Sandos, directed parents and students to a hillside, segregating groups by high, middle and elementary schools.
“They’re pretty frantic,” Sandos said of the parents. “But they’re doing really good, considering what they have been through.”
Patti Browning’s son was on a field trip to Denver when he called to say he was OK.
“That was a relief,” she said, “but I’m still worried for all the others.”
Dawn Mack, whose daughter attends Conifer High School, was at Deer Creek to check on her friends’ children. She had heard all sorts of rumors.
“You don’t know what’s going on,” Mack said. “You don’t know what to believe. … In that condition, your mind just goes out there.”
Browning added, “They should just get a microphone and tell everyone what’s going on so that we all know what the truth is.”
Bill Twyford of Bailey said he received a text message at 11:43 a.m. from his 15-year-old son, Billy: “Hey, there’s a gun-hijacking in our school right now. I’m fine. Bad situation, though.”
Parent Sally Impson waited at home in the early afternoon hoping to hear from her son Andrew, a 17-year-old senior at the school.
“I’m so shook,” she said. “I’d just like to know that he’s OK.It’s just scary. You don’t know what’s going on. You hear shots are fired. I hope to God that everything is OK.”
Corbino was reunited with Summer at 3:30 p.m. She raced to her daughter, threw her arms around her neck and stumbled back with her a few steps from hugging her so hard.
Summer Corbino was too overwhelmed with tears to recount what happened.
Another parent, Geraldine Callahan, rushed down a back road to the high school to look for son Randell after a friend told her there was a shooting.
She waited with about 20 other parents on the south side of the campus, watching as yellow buses arrived to carry students out of harm’s way.
“I was worried, very worried,” said Callahan, whose husband, Ted, waited on the north side. “Everybody just wants to be here.”
She said none of the parents was able to reach their children by cellphone. “The concern I have is he should be calling or answering,” she said of her son, who was released from the school about 3:30 p.m.
Tim Kacillas, a 17-year-old Platte Canyon High School junior, stayed home sick Wednesday.
He said he cried when he learned of the shooting.
“I’m worried. Anything like this is extremely serous,” said Tim, who lives nearby and came to the scene.
“That’s my friends in there. I know everyone in there. We’re really close.”
He said he felt fortunate to not have been in the school.
“I thank God. I woke up this morning and I was sick. … I just cried because I realized that God protected me.”
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-954-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
