LITTLETON, Colo.—An Australian woman who died in what police say was a suicide pact with her twin sister at a Colorado shooting range had no drugs or alcohol in her system, according to the coroner’s office.
The Arapahoe County coroner’s office told KMGH-TV in Denver Monday that Kristin Hermeler, 29, a history of despondency, but no suicide note was found at the south suburban shooting range where she died Nov. 15.
Candice Hermeler, who authorities say shot herself in the head at the same time, survived. Investigators say she told them that the sisters from Australia’s Victoria state from had a suicide pact but refused to say why they wanted to die.
Candice Hermeler, whose parents traveled to Colorado, left a Denver-area hospital in late November. The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department didn’t file any charges and closed its investigation.
The sisters “virtually simultaneously suffered gunshot wounds to the head,” the coroner’s report said.
The women had been in the Denver area for about five weeks. One had gun training two weeks before the shooting, and both showed up at the Family Shooting Center in Cherry Creek State Park about a week later for additional training, the sheriff’s department said.
The day of the shootings, the sisters took a taxi to the range from their hotel about six miles away and rented the pistols, according to investigators. The twins had been at the range about an hour and 20 minutes when surveillance video showed them falling about a half-second apart.
After the shootings, sheriff’s deputies found a photocopy of a magazine cover about the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in the twins’ belongings at a hotel. The school is about 20 miles from the shooting range.
Kristin Hermeler wrote letters shortly after the rampage that left 15 people dead to a former Columbine student who knew the gunmen. She wrote that she was upset that bullying had apparently set off the two student shooters, adding she and her sister had also been bullied in school.
However, investigators said Candice Hermeler told them that she didn’t care about Columbine and that it happened a long time ago.
The sisters were in the United States on cultural exchange visas.
