SCOTT LUDWIG: The bravery of the 14th Columbine victim

April 20, 1999. Columbine, Colorado.

It was a Tuesday, right around lunchtime. The students of Columbine High School were looking forward to their final days of another year of academia. Most of them would be moving up a grade next year, while others would be graduating and moving on with their adult lives.

All of them, however, were just a few weeks away from every students’ dream of enjoying a long and relaxing summer vacation. On this day, however, that dream suddenly came to an end, shattered by bullets fired from weapons in the hands of their very own classmates.

Between 11:19 a.m. and 12:08 p.m. – in just 49 minutes – 12 students and one teacher were dead. Thirteen lives needlessly lost. In addition, 20 more students and another teacher suffered injuries from the shooting. Ultimately, both shooters took their own lives as well.

At the time, it was the deadliest mass school shooting in the history of our country. From that day on, the word “Columbine” has been the byword for every school shooting since.

Seventeen-year-old Anne Marie Hochhalter was at school that day. She was sitting outside eating her lunch, breathing in the cool, crisp Colorado air. She had no way of knowing that life as she knew it was about to dramatically change. It changed the very moment that bullets entered Anne Marie’s chest and spine. When the gunfire finally stopped, she was taken to the hospital. Doctors didn’t expect her to survive.

Anne Marie proved the doctors wrong, albeit with one caveat: She was paralyzed from the waist down, never to walk again.

It gets worse. Six months after the shooting, her distraught mother, Carla, who was already suffering from depression and mental health issues prior to the shooting, walked into a pawn shop, asked to see a revolver, and used it to take her own life.

Yet, Anne Marie persevered. Against overwhelming odds and intimidating obstacles, it’s amazing what she managed to accomplish after being confined to a wheelchair.

· She advocated for supplemental Social Security assistance for the disabled.

· She made her voice heard — loudly and very clearly — on gun violence.

· She publicly opposed publicizing the names of killers in the media through the No Notoriety movement.

That last one is particularly important to Anne Marie. It bothered her to the core, and she never understood the adulation the Columbine killers received from their troubled followers in the years after the incident.

Perhaps her most magnanimous moment was in 2016, when Anne Marie shared an open letter she had written to the mother of one of the shooters. In it she forgave her son for his actions. The mother’s son allegedly took part in the massacre as a means to end his own life, and was simply following the orders of the other shooter, who was always considered the mastermind.

After attending the 25th anniversary vigil in 2024 for the victims of the shooting, Anne Marie had this to say: “I still feel sadness at the loss of the 13 people that died that day, but I felt their presence at the vigil. When the song ‘Over the Rainbow’ started playing, I looked at the empty chairs and suddenly felt all of them sitting there, with smiles on their faces, wanting us to remember the good times. The happy memories. They would want us to remember and laugh at their silly goofy antics when they were alive, instead of focusing on how their lives sadly ended. Those 13 are always with us. They’re never forgotten. We are Columbine.”

Sadly, Anne Marie Hochhalter, 43, was found deceased in her home in Westminster, Colo., on Feb. 16. Her family originally believed she died of natural causes related to the injuries she sustained at Columbine. However, the coroner’s office of Jefferson County ruled that she died from sepsis, with complications brought on by paraplegia. The two gunshot wounds from April 20, 1999, were considered to be significant contributing factors.

Therefore, Anne Marie Hochhalter’s death was officially ruled a homicide. And Columbine claimed one more victim.