The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, in a newly completed autopsy report, ruled last month’s death of Anne Marie Hochhalter, a 43-year-old paralyzed in the 1999 shooting, was a homicide.

Hochhalter died of sepsis, with complications from paraplegia due to two gunshot wounds serving as a “significant contributing factor,”  Dr. Dawn B. Holmes, a forensic pathologist in the coroner’s office, wrote in the 13-page report.

Holmes’ ruling that “the manner of death is best classified as homicide,” means the death toll from the April 20, 1999, school shooting has increased to 13 students and one teacher. The two killers took their own lives.

Hochhalter, who died in her Westminster home on Feb. 16, was paralyzed after being shot in the back. She spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair with ongoing health issues. However, loved ones told The Denver Post after her death that despite her medical complications and grief, she never wanted to be portrayed as a victim.

Hochhalter lived a rich life surrounded by friends, loved ones and dogs. She advocated for the disability community and had an affinity for playing musical instruments.

“She was fiercely independent,” Sue Townsend, stepmother of 18-year-old Lauren Townsend, who died in the Columbine shooting, told The Post last month “She was a fighter. She’d get knocked down — she struggled a lot with health issues that stemmed from the shooting — but I’d watch her pull herself back up. She was her best advocate and an advocate for others who weren’t as strong in the disability community.”

The others killed at Columbine that day include Cassie Bernall, 17; Steve Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matt Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; William “Dave” Sanders, 47; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

Hochhalter was 17 when her life shifted from teen clarinet player to among the most injured survivors of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. The high school junior was paralyzed after being shot in the back. She spent the rest of her days in a wheelchair with medical complications.

Six months after the shooting, her mother, Carla Hochhalter, walked into an Englewood pawnshop, asked to see a revolver and

Amid the media frenzy, medical care and grief, Anne Marie Hochhalter was determined to live life on her own terms. She went on to find her new normal, living independently in a handicap-accessible home with dogs to love and friends to cherish.

Anne Marie Hochhalter, 43, was found dead in her Westminster home Sunday.

Her death appears to be complications from the medical issues she suffered from the shooting, said Sue Townsend, stepmother of Lauren Townsend who died in the Columbine shooting. Sue and Rick Townsend reached out to Anne Marie Hochhalter after the tragedy and formed a familial relationship with her, calling her their “acquired daughter.”

“She was fiercely independent,” Sue Townsend said. “She was a fighter. She’d get knocked down — she struggled a lot with health issues that stemmed from the shooting — but I’d watch her pull herself back up. She was her best advocate and an advocate for others who weren’t as strong in the disability community.”

Editorial: The legacy of Columbine survivor Anne Marie Hochhalter — hope for an America divided over gun violence

The families, united by tragedy, found joy within each other's understanding, caring nature. They spent holidays and vacations together and developed a unique, intimate bond knitted together by wounds few else could understand.

"She was fun," Sue Townsend said.

In 2018, they all took a Hawaii trip and rigged an innertube so Anne Marie Hochhalter could float in the ocean, her legs dangling in the water.

"She said the two hours she was out there she didn’t have any nerve pain at all," Sue Townsend said. "The ocean was her happy place even though she didn’t get to go there but once."

Nathan Hochhalter, Anne Marie Hochhalter's brother, said his big sister was always a straight 'A' student who loved learning and reading. She had an affinity for musical instruments, playing harp, piano, clarinet and guitar.

"And she loved her mom a lot," Nathan Hochhalter said.

Animals -- particularly furry, four-legged friends -- filled a huge part of Anne Marie Hochhalter's heart.

She fostered dogs and owned several over the years, doting on them.

"She could probably name every dog in the neighborhood but maybe not the neighbors," Sue Townsend said, laughing.

Two neighbors, Jan and Dave Anderson, who were a part of Anne Marie Hochhalter's village, are taking her beloved chiweenie dog, Georgie.

Though Anne Marie Hochhalter was often in pain, she found escape in cinema. Sometimes, she and her friends would call each other, turn on a movie at the same time and watch it silently together over the phone, Sue Townsend said.

More than anything, Sue Townsend said Anne Marie Hochhalter would have wanted people to know she wasn't a victim.

Her resilience, Sue Townsend said, was driven in part by stubbornness.

"It was this attitude of 'I’ll show you,'" she said. "'You’re not going to get me down.'"

In 2016, Anne Marie Hochhalter wrote a letter to the mother of Dylan Klebold who, along with Eric Harris, killed twelve students and one teacher in a shooting rampage at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.

The letter to Sue Klebold coincided with an ABC television interview promoting her book "A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy."

In the letter, Anne Marie Hochhalter told Sue Klebold she harbored no ill will toward her.

"Just as I wouldn't want to be judged by the sins of my family members, I hold you in that same regard," Hochhalter wrote. "It's been a rough road for me, with many medical issues because of my spinal cord injury and intense nerve pain, but I choose not to be bitter towards you. A good friend once told me, 'Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die.' It only harms yourself. I have forgiven you and only wish you the best."

Eubanks, 37, was found dead May 18 in his Steamboat Springs home. He was a nationally-recognized addiction and recovery speaker, previously overcoming his own battle with painkillers following the 1999 Columbine massacre. He survived a gunshot wound but lost his best friend in the shooting.

“As an injured survivor of the Columbine shooting, Austin’s traumatic experience as a teen was the catalyst to his painful journey through addiction,” his website stated. “He has since devoted his career to helping those who have turned to substances as a result of trauma.”

His death was ruled an accident by “acute heroin toxicity,” according to the report. Eubanks had a history of opioid addiction and illicit drug abuse, the report said. Eubank’s father found him unresponsive on the day of his death, the report stated.

Eubanks’ family set up a memorial fund in his name and is collecting tax-deductible donations at austineubanks.com. In partnership with The OnSite Foundation, a nonprofit that provides counseling and emotional health education, the family is launching a therapeutic program for survivors of mass violence.

“Austin cared deeply about his family and close friends and fought a personal battle every day to bring light, hope and healing to others,” his sister Hayley Eubanks said in a statement. “He encouraged us all to lean in to the pain, and through this much-needed therapeutic program, his voice will continue to be heard and healing will begin.”

In a letter to Columbine families and staff members, district Superintendent Jason Glass said recent school shootings and a continuing “morbid fascination” with Columbine, as demonstrated by Sol Pais, the Florida teen who made her way to Colorado before taking her own life, is contributing to a need for a new building and school.

“The tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999 serves as a point of origin for this contagion of school shootings,” Glass said in the letter. “School shooters refer to and study the Columbine shooting as a macabre source of inspiration and motivation.”

Proposals for Columbine High School include:

• The current school name, colors and mascot would be unchanged. 
• The new school would be built near the current site, to the west.
• Consideration would be given to preserving the Hope Library, making it the cornerstone of the new building.
• The existing building would be demolished, replaced with fields and controlled entry points.

Twelve students and a teacher were killed at the school on April 20, 1999. More than 20 were wounded in the school shooting.

Frank DeAngelis, former school principal who survived the shootings, said Glass talked to him and others about the proposal before making it public.

“You look at what has happened, nationally and internationally, and there are still references to Columbine,” DeAngelis said. “I don’t think anyone 20 years ago anticipated that in 2019 we’d be talking about this fascination with Columbine High School.”

DeAngelis said he supports the proposal.

Tom Mauser’s 15-year-old son, Daniel, died at Columbine. Mauser is active in the gun control movement and is part of .

“I don’t really have any feelings about it,” Mauser said of the proposal. “Although, it seems to be a mighty big expense.”

Mauser said he does understand the need for increased security at the school, “and that’s unfortunate.”

The district “may need to be more visible and outward when publicizing security steps they’re going to take, but that could be kind of a no-win situation,” he said.

The district’s announcement included a link to a survey about the proposal, seeking feedback about a new building.

The district envisions asking voters for $60 million to $70 million to construct a new school. A $15 million expansion and renovation of the current school is part of the 5B Bond Program approved by voters in 2018. Glass said the approved money could be part of a construction package, if approved, or it could be distributed to other Jeffco schools to fund enhanced safety features.

Recently, as the 20th anniversary of the attack approached and passed, local law enforcement made contact with “hundreds of individuals seeking to enter the school and reconnect with the 1999 murders,” Glass said. “Most of them are there to satisfy curiosity or a macabre, but harmless, interest in the school. For a small group of others, there is a potential intent to do harm.”

The current school uses a sophisticated surveillance and security system, making it among the safest schools in the country, Glass said.

Schools officials are in the preliminary and exploratory stages, Glass said, and the district is seeking community feedback on the proposal.

On a crisp Saturday morning last month, they returned — one by one, sometimes in pairs — to Columbine High School.

Parents who lost children there. A sibling who escaped that day’s horror only to learn his sister hadn’t. A former student who spent three terrifying hours barricaded in an office. And another who sprinted out of her math class at the first cracks of gunfire.

They returned in advance of today’s 20th anniversary of one of the darkest days in Colorado history, when two teens walked into their Jefferson County high school carrying guns and bombs, and opened fire on their unsuspecting classmates, murdering 12 students and a teacher before ending their own lives.

The 10 family members and survivors made their way through Columbine’s bright and spacious library, which they had helped make a reality after the original library, the site of so much carnage, was razed. They’d agreed to talk to local journalists about April 20, 1999, and the very personal aftermath of what¶¶Ňőap now the one-word shorthand for the killing sprees that are a regular fixture of American life.

But that¶¶Ňőap not what Columbine means to them.

“Columbine is something to the Columbine community that the rest of the world will never understand,” said Coni Sanders, daughter of Dave Sanders, the teacher who bled to death inside a classroom that day while desperate students tried to save his life. “I’m somewhat saddened over the years that Columbine became a euphemism for mass shooting. It¶¶Ňőap become a fascination for murderers around the world.

“It used to be a flower,” she said wistfully. “It used to be a school. It used to be a community that now, if you say it even 20 years later, people will tell you where they were when they heard about it, what they remember about it, how they’re connected to it. It¶¶Ňőap like a fantasy thinking back to what Columbine was prior to April 20, 1999, and I wish with all my heart that¶¶Ňőap what it could still be. But it¶¶Ňőap not.”

As the former students, parents and siblings cycled through the library that Saturday morning, most were open to discussing anything. But some participated in the event — run by a public relations firm hired by Jeffco Public Schools — under certain parameters. They weren’t going to talk about the killers, or wouldn’t opine on gun legislation.

One of the survivors, who was shot multiple times that day, sat for a few interviews before needing a break to collect himself. He never returned.

Yet it wasn’t an overwhelmingly grim experience, as mothers and fathers and step-parents and daughters lit up while sharing long-cherished memories of their loved ones. They extolled the ways they found something positive — spreading kindness and compassion, fighting for gun control, supporting mass-tragedy survivors, even helping animals — to work toward in the wake of life-altering loss.

And many of them, as they discussed what came after Columbine, peppered the conversations with the same word.

“H´Ç±č±đ.”

“There was a real change”

That optimism is enshrined at the school itself, in the very name of the Hope Columbine Memorial Library. The families spent the initial year-and-a-half following the tragedy working to fund and build the new library on the back side of the school.

For Rick Townsend, the father of 18-year-old Lauren, who was killed in the old library, the push to rebuild was a needed focus in those darkest days. “We had the advantage of grieving early on with 12 other families, although we were grieving in a fishbowl,” he said.

The families found strength in each other, and the community, with the shared task of replacing the library, then establishing the permanent memorial to those lost at Columbine in nearby Clement Park.

“We talk to people now who are in their 20s and they don’t have a real feeling for Columbine,” Townsend said. “… What I’d like them to take away from this is there is hope. Over time, we have come a long way. The community came out and supported us, and still does to this day.”

Columbine was a watershed moment, he said, that showed people that seemingly safe spaces — schools, libraries — weren’t safe.

“I feel like if we pay attention to what¶¶Ňőap happened, if we try to reach out to other people, if we try to share love and kindness, I know that sounds cliche, but it¶¶Ňőap certainly something we could use and move on from and try to find ways to stop or reduce what¶¶Ňőap been going on,” Townsend said.

Dawn Anna and Bruce Beck, Lauren’s mother and stepfather, said they and her siblings have found great solace over the years in being able to further the late teen’s animal advocacy.

They established the , which has donated more than $300,000 in her name to nonprofit organizations that focus on animal welfare or wildlife preservation.

Beck recalled Lauren once telling her older brother Matt, “You can’t get married because when you and I graduate from college, you and I are going to go out in the world and make a difference.”

“She wasn’t able to do that physically with Matt, but she has made a difference in so many animals’ lives in the last 20 years,” Beck said. “We couldn’t be prouder of what she’s accomplished.”

In the broader sense, Anna — who calls Lauren, her fourth child, “our oopise baby” — hopes people will take inspiration from the promising lives cut short on that April 20 by using the day this year to give back.

The third-annual will take place Saturday, with hundreds of students and teachers from the high school fanning out into the community to do good and honor those who died 20 years ago.

“Right after Columbine, people wanted to be better people,” Anna said. “People wanted to be better moms and dads and brothers and sisters and neighbors. And there was a real change in people’s attitudes.

“We want people to recommit on that day,” she said of the anniversary. “We want them to remember how they were that day, not the horror, but how they were better people.”

“The magnitude of things”

Missy Mendo was 14 on the morning she fled Columbine, running out of the school with classmates after they realized the sounds they were hearing weren’t students banging on lockers, but gunfire.

Like so many others, she thought it was a senior prank.

“Then we looked out the window and we could see kids running across the street without looking in any direction,” Mendo said. “And we stood up and we ran with them into the park across the street — and then they started shooting at us in the park.”

It wasn’t until later, after she’d safely made it back home, that she began to understand the enormity of what had happened.

“I remember the dial-up from AOL,” Mendo said. “I dialed in, and seeing it on the web. That’s when I knew the magnitude of things. Because (the headline) was from an Australian newspaper.”

Mendo and Heather Martin, who was a Columbine senior just two days shy of her 18th birthday on the day of the massacre, now help run , a nonprofit organization Martin co-founded in the wake of 2012’s Aurora theater shooting to support the victims of mass trauma.

It’s a way that both Columbine survivors — Martin spent hours barricaded in an office off of the choir room before SWAT officers freed her — can use to turn their own experiences toward helping others.

“When I went to college right afterward, I just felt really lost, and I didn’t really have anyone to support or anyone to talk to,” Martin said. “I ended up dropping out. I went back to college after the (Columbine) 10-year anniversary, when I finally came back into the school.”

She’d avoided anything having to do with the Columbine anniversary for the first nine years. But after a decade had passed, she not only returned to her old high school, but earned a teaching license.

“After the shootings at the Aurora theater, we started The Rebels Project in order to support that community,” Martin said. “It’s an event that’s so unique. There’s not a lot of people that can understand it. Because we felt so lost (after Columbine), we thought that we could offer support so that their road would be less rocky.”

“My particular path”

Tom Mauser is one of the most recognizable members of the Columbine family, a father who almost immediately began channeling the grief over his murdered son Daniel into a fight for stricter gun-control measures that, 20 years later, continues.

But that was never Mauser’s plan.

“It was remembering Daniel’s words to me two weeks before Columbine,” he said of what pushed him into activism. “Daniel asked me a question at the dinner table, out of the blue, based on a conversation he’d heard among members of the debate team. Just in conversation. ‘Dad, did you know there are loopholes in the Brady Bill?’

“And I just kind of blew it off,” Mauser said. “… Two weeks later, he was killed with a gun that was purchased through one of those loopholes in the Brady Bill. So I said to myself, ‘How can I not react to that?’ ”

Eleven days after Columbine, the Charlton Heston-led National Rifle Association held a previously scheduled, , meeting in Denver that . Mauser was there, too, but hadn’t planned to speak.

“I asked the organizers of the rally, ‘Are any of the other Columbine parents here?’ They said no, and I said, ‘Oh, OK. Well, in that case, I guess I do have to speak.'”

After that debut, Mauser went on to help convince Colorado voters to , closing the so-called gun show loophole that had allowed the Columbine killers to acquire weapons from private sellers without background checks.

Mauser has remained active on gun control since, most recently lending his voice to those backing Colorado’s just-adopted red-flag law, which will give judges the power to order the seizure of firearms from people thought to be at a high risk of harming themselves or others.

And he traces it all back to that stray dinnertime question from Daniel.

“I had to choose my particular path,” Mauser said.

“We’re fortunate that way”

Darrell Scott can vividly describe his daughter Rachel, the first person killed at Columbine that spring day, shot four times as she ate lunch with a friend outside the school’s west entrance.

He happily goes on about her bubbly personality, her compassion and kindness, her devotion to animals so strong “she would bring home a stray dog, a stray cat, a stray skunk.” He’s less certain, though, about how his family started sharing her message across North America.

“Honestly, people have asked me, ‘How did you start ?’ And I don’t know the answer to that because we didn’t sit down and intend to start an organization,” Scott said.

Scott was asked to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about a month after Columbine, and he says the reaction to his remarks about his daughter’s life immediately drew dozens of requests to speak about the tragedy. He began doing that, and, over time, that grew into a robust school assembly program and other educational curricula.

Today, Rachel’s Challenge is dedicated to creating a climate in schools “less susceptible to harassment, bullying and violence,” and uses Rachel’s writings as signposts toward greater mercy and understanding. Its message reaches 1 million to 2 million students a year through clubs and assemblies across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Scott said.

“We feel blessed that we get to celebrate her life every day and we get to see her kindness and compassion, and the kids really relate to her,” said Sandy Scott, Rachel’s stepmother. “We’re fortunate that way.”

Craig Scott, Rachel’s brother, was at Columbine that day, too.

He escaped with his life, despite being in the library when the killers entered “shooting off their guns, treating it like a game.” Hiding under a table, he watched them kill his friends Isaiah Shoels and Matt Kechter.

“I was lying in their blood and I thought I was going to die,” he said. “The only thing I could do at that moment was to pray. I asked God to take away all of the fear I was having cause I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt like my heart was going to stop beating. And so I felt relief from my fear, and then I heard God speak to me and tell me to get out of there.

“And so I was the first student in the room to stand up,” he added. “I looked around and saw the shooters were gone. I yelled at everyone, ‘Let’s get out of here! I think they’re gone!’ ”

He helped pick up a student who “had her shoulder blown off from a shotgun blast,” and the surviving students in the library fled the school. Though he feared the worst, his family wouldn’t get official word until the next morning that Rachel was dead.

Like his father and stepmother, Craig Scott has in the years since channeled the pain and grief of Columbine into something more life-affirming. He now works with the Monument-based nonprofit organization , that, like Rachel’s Challenge, puts on school assemblies with a message of valuing human life.

“My family and I have grown closer together because of what happened, and we’re supportive of each other, just taking time to listen to one another, grieve with one another, share memories with Rachel with each other, have good times together,” he said. “My faith and family was definitely a big part of getting through all of it and healing, and I’m so thankful I had that in my life.”

“Running at the shooters”

Coni Sanders knows her father is considered a hero. But for many years, it was more complicated than that for her heart-torn family.

Dave Sanders helped evacuate Columbine’s cafeteria before venturing deeper into the school, toward the gunfire. He encountered the killers, who shot him twice in the back and once in the neck — then was pulled into a classroom, where students tried to keep him alive.

Cameras seized on the sign in a second-story window. But rescue didn’t come for hours, after Sanders slipped away.

“I was not surprised by how he acted that day, but I was angry for many years,” said Sanders, a forensic therapist who works to rehabilitate violent criminals. “We felt like he chose his students over us by not only running back into the school, but running at the shooters. It was probably 10 years after that when my young daughter said without any prompting… that ‘Grandpa was in the right place at the right time.’

“And it was at that point that we realized that if he hadn’t been where he was, there’d be more than 12 names to read today. There’d be more than 12 names of dead children. And I can’t imagine,” she continued, “and I don’t think he could have imagined, ever losing a child. And we are so grateful that he made that choice.

“But,” Sanders added, beginning to cry for the first time on that Saturday morning, “we still miss him.”

Cassie Bernall

Steven Robert Curnow

Corey Depooter

Kelly Fleming

Matt Kechter

Daniel Mauser

Danny Rohrbough

Dave Sanders

Rachel Scott

Isaiah Shoels

John Tomlin

Lauren Townsend

Kyle Velasquez

Editor’s Note: This obituary was originally published on April 23, 1999. It has been republished for the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Every summer from the time he was three years old, 15-year-old Danny Rohrbough would help his father and grandfather harvest wheat on their 720-acre farm near Colby, Kan.

During the rest of the year in Denver, he would spend his after-school hours two or three times a week helping in the family’s car and home stereo business.

All year long, he saved the money he made working at the farm and at the store to buy Christmas presents for everyone in the family.

“He didn’t spend any on himself, and he was upset because he came up $4 short on the last present,” said his father, Brian Rohrbough.

That was typical of Danny, who family and friends alike described as kind, unselfish, and caring.

On Tuesday, as news of the shootings at Columbine High unfolded on radio and TV, Danny’s father was filled with dread when his son didn’t show up as usual to help out after school at the shop.

The next morning relatives learned for the first time of his fate when they opened a local newspaper and saw a photograph of Danny’s body, lying where he had been shot, outside the school. One relative was so upset that he drove over to the high school and tried to push through the barricades to be near the body. He was gently restrained by police, who were very compassionate, said Danny’s mother, Susan Petrone.

“It was heart-wrenching, but at least we knew what had happened; all these other families were still waiting to hear,” said Petrone.

Danny “was an awesome kid and a great friend,” said 14-year-old Matt Houck. He and Danny and their friend, Derek Pontius, 15, would play frisbee, ride bikes, play roller hockey, and just hang out together. A fourth friend was Sean Graves, who was among those wounded on Tuesday.

Danny’s grandfather, Claude Rohrbough, treasured his grandson’s companionship.

“At the shop, he’d help me with the inventory,” he said. “He was also pretty good on the computer. If there were any letters to be typed, he’d type them. He’d show up after school, and sometimes he’d be hungry and we’d head out to the pizza place for a slice of pizza and a coke and we’d talk about nothing. He was a good friend.”

They had their last talk on Monday night.

His mother saw him for the last time at breakfast time on Tuesday morning.

“Usually I don’t see him,” she said. “He usually rides to school early with his sister, Nicole. But he came down Tuesday for breakfast, and we talked about stuff, just chit chat, and before he left I gave him a hug and a kiss and told him I loved him.”

Those few moments — the talking and the chit-chatting — are the moments she wants to remember about his last day. She never saw him again.

Editor’s Note: This obituary was originally published on April 23, 1999. It has been republished for the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Isaiah Shoels was days from becoming one of the few African-Americans ever to graduate from Columbine High School. Then he was shot and killed in Tuesday’s carnage.

Now that some of the shock has worn off, the anger is boiling out of his father, Michael.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. We should be watching our children. Their hatred is taking over our planet,” said Shoels, whose fury gathered strength during a 45-minute interview with five reporters in his living room on Thursday, less than 24 hours after he was told of his oldest son’s death. His wife, Vonda, hovered in the kitchen, unwilling to face the media.

“I’m very upset with the parents (of the two gunmen). They should have watched their children. If my child had had six butane tanks in my garage, don’t you think I’d ask him about it?” he said, referring to barbecue-type propane bottles turned into bombs by the two killers. “If I didn’t, it would suggest that I don’t give a damn about him.

“Those parents now are telling the media to respect their privacy. Well, we can’t respect our own privacy because my son is getting ready to go into the ground.”

Shoels, 42, had 15 brothers and sisters growing up in Amarillo, Texas. He and his wife, who have four other children as well as a foster child, moved to the nearly pure white Columbine neighborhood in 1997 from Lakewood.

“I wanted them to have the very best. I never thought in my wildest dreams that this would happen here.” At one point, they had eight children living in their house, three of them foster children. The neighbors called the Shoels “exceptional people.”

Shoels said Isaiah, 18, played cornerback on the football team but quit last year, possibly because of racial intimidation. He was a keyboardist who wanted to become a record producer, like his father. The elder Shoels is president of Notorious Records, a 10-year-old firm, and Ft. Knox Entertainment, which he started in 1997 to promote black musicians in the Denver area. Isaiah intended to continue his schooling next year at the Denver Institute of the Arts.

He said his son cared about the people he knew, that he could make someone laugh when they felt like crying.

“He wouldn’t complain. He’d take that negative energy and make it into something constructive. They took the wrong kid. He could have been one of their best friends they could have had.”

Shoels said his son spoke his mind but was not as confrontational as his younger sister, Michelle, a 15-year-old sophomore.

Michelle was suspended last year, along with several white girls, after they told her on the athletic field to “get her n—– ass out of here,” Shoels said. Michelle confronted the girls, although Shoels didn’t know if it turned into a physical fight. He went to school officials, he said, but they did nothing except make the kids apologize.

Shoels said he is going on a mission after his son’s burial – to start rallies, to start bringing parents and children together, “to start showing the kids there’s a better way.

“This crime was committed by a group that was taught hatred. That hatred doesn’t happen overnight. It was taught,” he said. “Let’s get with our children, stop teaching them hate, teach them love. Let’s teach them all to get along. Once we’re gone, they’re all that’s left.”

While his other children refuse to return to Columbine High School, he said he will not move out of his neighborhood.

Editor’s Note: This obituary was originally published on April 23, 1999. It has been republished for the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Relatives and friends brought food and hugs and love into the modest suburban home of Albert and Phyllis Velasquez on Friday.

Still, mourning hung over the family like a shroud.

The Velasquez’ son, 16-year-old Kyle, was one of the 13 people murdered in the Columbine High School massacre.

Albert Velasquez said the family still wasn’t ready to say much about the tragedy.

“We’re just not ready to make a statement,” he said softly. “It’s just really hard to talk about it.

“Our grieving has just started. It would be a lot better if we were just kind of left alone for a while. ”

Next door, a neighbor shoveled snow from his driveway. He said the Velasquez’ have lived in the home “for years” and called them “a tight-knit family.”

The snow on the sidewalk beside the Velasquez had not been shovelled. But none of the stream of people coming to pay their respects seemed to notice.

Funeral services will be held on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. at St. James Presbyterian Church, 3601 Belleview Ave. There will be full military color guard honors for the internment at Ft. Logan National Cemetery. Albert Velasquez was a Vietnam-era military veteran, the funeral director said.

The family asks that memorial contributions be sent to the Kyle A. Velasquez Memorial Fund, care of Drinkwine Family Mortuary, P.O. 650, Littleton, Colo.; 80160-0650.

Editor’s Note: This obituary was originally published on April 23, 1999. It has been republished for the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Cassie Bernall’s Christian faith saved her once when her life was in turmoil, and her unwavering trust made her a martyr the instant after she was taunted by the gunmen in Columbine High School’s library on Tuesday.

“Do you believe in God?” one of them asked.

“Yes, I do believe in God,” Bernall said.

Then he pulled the trigger.

Bernall’s young friends at the West Bowles Community Church youth group cling to that story like a lifeline. With her last breaths, she affirmed the faith she embraced and it made the shy, quiet Bernall a hero in their eyes.

Seth Huoy and Crystal Woodman, who belong to the Bernall’s church youth group, were in the library, too.

They survived, and one way they make sense of the massacre is to tell about the girl who died because she believed in God. They prayed for invisibility, and in at least one sense, their prayer was answered: Death passed them by.

“There were 40 members of our youth group at Columbine that day who made it out,” said Dave McPherson, the youth group director, “and only one in the group who did not.”

“Cassie talked a lot about how she knew God’s purpose – and maybe she knew, you know? That it was her time,” said Cassandra Chase. “She’s with God now,” said Kevin Koeniger, another youth group member numb with grief.

“She deserves to be with Him. It’s not a question of where she is. But it’s hard to stay strong and rise above it.”

Everyone remembers Cassie Bernall’s gorgeous hair, the color of cornsilk, that hung halfway down her back. She planned to cut it short, said her aunt, Kayleen Bernall.

“She was going to cut off that beautiful blonde hair and give it to someone who makes wigs for kids who are going through chemo, and stuff like that,” she said.

“That’s something, right there, that tells you what kind of girl she was. She told me she wanted it really short. She said, “I want enough hair for two or three kids, as many kids as possible.’

“And that’s what she was like. She was so amazing. Such a sweetheart. Even when she was going through her teens, she never acted too big or too old to play with her cousins. She was always kind. And she and her brother were so cute together.”

Bernall told her aunt that she wanted to go to medical school, and be a doctor when she graduated. She wanted to go back to England and Scotland. She envisioned becoming better at the nature photographs she loved to take.

She was excited about the Bible study class that the church youth group had planned to hold last Tuesday evening. She couldn’t wait to share the insights, Bernall told her friends, that came to her when she was going over the assigned passages.

The topic: “Seeking Peace.”