EVERGREEN — He was quiet and mostly kept to himself, apart from occasionally asking a classmate for a pencil or exchanging a few words in a quick conversation.
That’s how Owen Peterson described his former classmate, Desmond Holly, the 16-year-old suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at Evergreen High School who Owen sat side by side with during their fifth-period jewelry-making class this school year.
Desmond died Wednesday night at St. Anthony Hospital after wounding two other students and shooting himself.
Owen, a sophomore, said he didn’t get to know Desmond well and didn’t consider him a friend, but he also never pegged Desmond as someone he should eye warily.
“He just seemed like a normal, everyday kid that was really shy and wouldn’t talk to us that much,” Owen, 15, told The Colorado Sun.
Owen sat with friends at a table in the cafeteria Wednesday catching up on typical teen to-do’s, including forming a group chat with about 130 students where they could all keep track of their Homecoming plans later this fall. Suddenly, a muffled message came over the intercom. Owen said he didn’t hear the message but within a moment the cafeteria erupted.
“Every single person in the lunch room springs up at once in a panic,” Owen said.
He scurried out a door with his peers and as they were running, he said he heard the first gunshot 20 or 30 feet from them.
“Right that instant, I immediately know what’s going on,” Owen said.
He tripped, fell and scraped his knee while bolting, but got back up and kept running. While many students turned left at one point, Owen and some others made a flash decision to head to the right down a dirt road. One of Owen’s friends lived down the street and he said he hoped to be able to find safety inside.
Terrified and escaping in a blur, Owen said he caught sight of the shooter, recalling seeing a tall, lanky, skinny male with brownish blonde hair walking out of the school toward him and other kids dashing away right before a shot rang out. He didn’t spot a gun, but he saw the person’s hand raised and pointed directly at them. Owen, who kept running while his longtime friend, Ethan Ramirez, dove into a ditch, said he firmly believes he was looking at the shooter.
“At that moment right before the shooter fired the shot, that’s when I got a glimpse,” Owen said.
Ethan, also a sophomore, ducked down in the ditch for no more than a few seconds, his arm scratched from the tumble down.
“I was just scared if I stayed there he would have came after me,” Ethan, 16, said. So he got back on his feet and continued running, hoping he wouldn’t get shot.
“As I was running, I was saying out loud to my friends, ‘This isn’t real. This can’t be happening,’” Ethan said. “I was in disbelief. I was in shock. I was really scared. I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want to get shot.”
Owen, Ethan and another friend saw a student pop inside the house of a stranger, a man named Mike, who also shepherded them into his home. The three hid in a basement bathroom with another student, locking themselves inside for at least an hour and a half while frantically trying to get a hold of parents, police and other friends.
The massive group chat created ahead of Homecoming turned into a lifeline for students, lighting up furiously with messages from kids trying to understand what happened and whether they were safe. Later, rumors started to flood the group about who was behind the shooting and their motive.
Ethan said upon leaving the basement, police escorted his group to the library before they boarded a school bus and headed to Bergen Elementary School to meet their families, clarifying a detail from an earlier account. Later that night, Owen and Ethan attended a service at Flatirons Community Church so that they could reunite with their friends.
“Even though I knew that they were OK, I had to see them,” Owen said. “I had to see everyone.”
On Thursday, when Owen learned the identity of the suspect, he said he immediately knew the boy he laid eyes on in the midst of running away was the person he shared a table with during fifth period, Desmond.
His sense of shock had barely weakened Thursday afternoon. He said a touch of paranoia will likely follow him once he returns to school. But maybe that will fade over time.
“It’s almost like it didn’t happen,” Owen said. “I can’t believe that this happened to us.”
Ethan, who did not know Desmond, is also still trying to grasp the reality of the tragedy he and his friends survived.
When he returns to school, he said, he wants extra layers of security to reinforce safety for students, including metal detectors along with “some sort of reassurance that it won’t happen again.”
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