Death of paralyzed Columbine survivor is dominated a murder, elevating dying toll from 1999 college bloodbath to 14

The death of Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was paralyzed in the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, has been ruled a homicide.

The 43-year-old died last month of injuries she sustained from gunshot wounds nearly 26 years after the school massacre.

The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office classified her death on February 16 a homicide in a report released Wednesday. Her cause of death was sepsis, with the two gunshot wounds she sustained in the shooting being a “significant contributing factor,” wrote forensic pathologist Dr Dawn B Holmes in the 13-page report.

Almost 26 years ago, on April 20, 1999, two teenagers rushed the high school in Columbine, Colorado and fatally shot a dozen classmates and a teacher. Hochhalter was left paralyzed in the attack.

With Hochhalter’s death, the total number of people who died from the shooting, not including the two teenage attackers who shot themselves, is now 14.

The other Columbine victims were: Teacher William “Dave” Sanders, 47; Cassie Bernall, 17; Steve Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matt Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; Lauren Townsend, 18; John Tomlin, 16 and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

Hochhalter’s brother Nathan said a pressure sore, a common problem for people living with paralysis, led to sepsis. He said he knew that his sister’s life would likely be shorter because of her paralysis but her death this early was unexpected.

“We didn’t think it would be this bad this soon,” he said.

Hochhalter struggled with intense pain from her gunshot wounds in the years following the shooting, but fought hard to to overcome the complications of her injuries and remain positive, family and friends said.

Her own tragedy was deepened by the suicide of her mother Carla, six months after the school shooting. Hochhalter said her mother suffered from depression and said she did not believe the shootings were directly to blame for her death.

After her mother’s passing, she became the “acquired daughter” of another family that lost a child in the Columbine shooting, Lauren Townsend. Townsend’s stepmother, Sue Townsend, reached out to help Hochhalter as a way to cope with her own grief, but eventually Hochhalter was coming over for family dinners and joining them on vacations.

“She brought a light to our lives that will shine for a long time,” Townsend said.

Hochhalter attended a vigil marking the 25th anniversary of the shooting last year, after skipping a similar event five years earlier because of post-traumatic stress disorder, she said in a social media post.

This time she said she was flooded with happy memories from her childhood and said she wanted those killed remembered for how they lived, not how they died.

“I’ve truly been able to heal my soul since that awful day in 1999,” she wrote.

Since Columbine, there have been over 390 school shootings resulting in the deaths of at least 203 people, according to Brady United, the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention group.

A then-17-year-old Hochhalter was eating lunch with her friends when she was shot in the back and chest. Her injuries left her paralyzed from the waist down and with chronic pain.

She devoted her life to advocating for gun violence prevention and recently appeared at a 25th anniversary vigil to honor the victims.

In 2016, she penned a letter to one of the mothers of the assailants, Sue Klebold, telling her: “Just as I wouldn’t want to be judged by the sins of my family members, I hold you in that same regard…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.”

Hochhalter loved dogs and helping members of her family, relatives told CNN.

With reporting from the Associated Press

Source: independent.co.uk