Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [115]
Dave Sanders was on the second level outside the library when he saw a gunman coming down the hallway. He had turned to run away when he was shot. However, he managed to crawl to the science block where teacher Richard Long helped him into classroom SCI-3. There, two Eagle Scouts, Kevin Starkey and Aaron Hancey, gave him first aid. Despite their efforts, Sanders died.
Outside Deputy Magor set up a road-block on Pierce Street where a teacher and students told him that someone was patrolling the school with a gun. Then he received a report that hand-grenades had gone off at the school. These were, in fact, pipe bombs which Harris and Klebold had set off in the hallway. They threw two more down the stairwell into the cafeteria and fired into the hallway outside the library.
Students were now running from the school, seeking safety behind Taborsky’s patrol car on the west side. They told the police that gunmen were inside the school randomly shooting at people with UZIs or shotguns and throwing hand-grenades. The younger of the two gunmen was of high school age. The other was ‘taller, a little older’. Both were wearing black trench coats.
By this time, deputies were ringing the school and more reports of injuries were coming in. Deputy Gardner was requesting emergency medical help to the west side when he came under fire from a large calibre weapon.
Harris and Klebold then walked into the school library and told the students to get up. When Harris shot up the front counter, one student, who was hiding behind the photocopier, was injured by flying splinters of wood. Another student was killed before Harris and Klebold began a gunfight out of the windows with the police. Then they turned their attention back on the students in the west section of the library, killing four and injuring four more. They shot out the display cabinet near the front door before firing their guns into the east section of the library, injuring five and killing three. Reloading, they went into the centre section where they killed two more students and injured another two. One gunman yelled: ‘Yahoo.’
In the seven-and-a-half minutes the gunmen were in the library they killed ten people and wounded 12 more. Those who survived did so only because they hid until they were evacuated later by a S.W.A.T. team: Patti Nielson managed to hide in a cupboard; another teacher hid in the periodicals rooms; and two of the library staff sought refuge in the library’s TV studio. At 11.30 Jefferson County Patrol Deputy Rick Searle began evacuating the students, some of them wounded, who have taken cover behind Taborsky’s patrol car. He moved them to a safe location at Caley Avenue and Yukon Street south-west of the school where a triage point was set up. At the south end of the student car park Deputy Kevin Walker provided cover for the students fleeing from the cafeteria. Through the windows on the upper level, he saw one of the gunmen wearing a ‘white T-shirt with some kind of holster vest’ leading to speculation that there were three gunmen. They didn’t know that by this time, Harris had discarded his black trench coat.
Fearing the situation was escalating, Deputy Magor radioed the Sheriff’s Office that more help was needed. However, the Denver Police Department was already on its way as one of its officers had a son who a student at Columbine and had called his father.
Minutes later, the Jefferson County S.W.A.T. team, led by Lieutenant Terry Manwaring, was on the way to the high school, and they quickly established a command post at the corner of Pierce Street and Littlewood. Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office also requested assistance from other agencies. Soon after the Colorado State Patrol turned up and took up positions on the north-east side of the school by the tennis courts. Firefighters from Littleton’s fire department