As students and staff reconnected at Deer Creek Middle School on Friday, the two men perhaps most responsible for all the smiling faces finally got a chance to talk.
David Benke, who grabbed a gunman at the school Tuesday just after he fired and wounded two students but before he could shoot any more, and Norm Hanne, who came to Benke’s aid, pieced together their imperfect recollections.
The two math teachers joked that the school was lucky their department was on bus duty that day, as both men are 6-foot-5 and made relatively quick work of the man authorities identified as Bruco “Bo” Strong Eagle Eastwood.
But as they recounted the details of Tuesday’s shooting, the joking stopped.
“You seemed pretty ticked off,” Benke said to Hanne of the immediate aftermath of their wrestling match with Eastwood.
“I was scared as hell,” Hanne said.
“I didn’t have time to be scared. He was looking at me, with the gun at the ready,” said Benke, who added that later, when it was over, he would wander around inside the school crying.
Hanne said that when a girl announced, “He’s got a gun,” he was glad she saw it too.
“I thought I was hallucinating,” Hanne said.
Hanne and Benke said Eastwood just stood in one place for at least several seconds.
“He was drinking in the terror,” Benke said.
“He was enjoying the effect he was having on the kids,” Hanne said.
After the shots were fired (Benke now thinks it was three, not two), Benke tackled Eastwood, not yet knowing who, if anyone, had been hit. He tried to calm Eastwood down by asking his name and whether he had any children who were students at Deer Creek.
Assistant principal Becky Brown grabbed the rifle. Eastwood continued to flail.
Hanne, after all the students were safely inside, went back outside where Benke was on the ground with Eastwood.
“He was just hanging on. I had passed Becky with the gun,” Hanne said. Next, he jumped on Eastwood and Benke.
“Look, Bud, I’m 6-foot-5 and Norm is 6-foot-8. You’re not going anywhere,” Benke said he thinks he remembers saying. Eastwood struggled the whole time, demanding to be let go.
“No, bud, you’re done,” Benke said.
Hanne said the gunman had said something like: ” ‘They took away my freedom.’ I have no idea what he meant.”
A school maintenance worker and two bus drivers soon would arrive to help subdue Eastwood.
“Everybody did something,” Hanne said.
As they talked, other teachers and staff walked through the school wearing new white T-shirts inscribed “Place of Many Heroes.”
Among the 525 who attended Friday’s open house was Rea gan Weber, 13, one of the two injured students. She was smiling — a bulky long bandage still obscuring a slender arm peppered with bullet fragments.
Her mother, Deborah, embraced the teacher, Jacqueline Adkins, whose classroom was Reagan’s refuge immediately after the shooting.
“She took care of my daughter after . . .,” Deborah Weber began, but didn’t finish.
School walls — inside and out — were plastered with posters, some offering advice for coping with trauma (“Keep your family routines” and “Play a favorite song”). Giant placards bore warm wishes from other schools: “Deer Creek, You’re in Our Hearts — Love, Columbine.”
The common area held table after table of giant banners covered with Deer Creek students’ own scribbled thoughts to teachers, staff, first responders and law enforcement, among them: “Thanks for protecting us.”
Posters were in progress wishing speedy recoveries for Reagan and Matthew Thieu, 14, recovering from serious wounds to his lung and ribs.
Like the T-shirts say, Deer Creek is a place of many heroes, though Hanne and Benke would dispute their status.
Hanne said he didn’t know whether publicly talking about what happened would help any other teacher anywhere. It’s impossible to know what you’ll do until a killer comes to your school.
“Maybe teachers will go out to duty more,” Benke said. “Maybe they’ll have more dinners together as a faculty.”
Brown had told Benke she made herself go grab the gun because she thought of the two math teachers as family.
And Friday, in the school’s common area, parent Joe Sorenson’s wife looked around at the smiling students, talking quietly, and said to him: “It’s funny to see them socialize this way. They’re not being as loud or silly like usual. They’re subdued.”
The school will reopen for classes Monday, with additional security in place.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
