Suspect dead after wounding 2 students

EVERGREEN — A teenager is dead after shooting two of his fellow students at Evergreen High School in the Jefferson County foothills Wednesday, then turning his gun on himself, law enforcement officials said.

All three students were transported to CommonSpirit St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, where one was pronounced dead Wednesday evening, hospital spokesperson Lindsay Foster said.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the student who died was the suspected shooter, but did not release the teen’s name. One of the wounded students remained in critical condition.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers responded to the high school at 29300 Buffalo Park Road after a 911 caller reported an active shooting at 12:24 p.m., Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jacki Kelley said at a briefing Wednesday.

Sheriff’s officials confirmed Wednesday evening that the suspected shooter, a juvenile male student armed with a handgun, sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

No additional information about the suspect was available.

“This is the scariest thing that could ever happen, and these parents were really frightened, and so were the kids,” Kelley said. “And I know we say ‘never again,’ and here we are.”

It’s not clear where the shooting started, but investigators have found areas inside and outside of the school where shots were fired, Kelley said. She said the suspect used a handgun in the shooting, but she could not be more specific about the type of weapon.

Jefferson County Sheriff Reggie Marinelli said deputies were on scene in two minutes. There was no school resource officer on the campus at the time of the shooting, but Jeff Pierson, Jeffco Public Schools’ executive director of school safety, confirmed such an officer is assigned to Evergreen High School. He could not say whether the officer was working at the campus Wednesday.

Kelley said the investigation will focus on the suspect, including his locker, car, home and social media, to learn more about him.

Dr. Brian Blackwood, the trauma program medical director at CommonSpirit St. Anthony Hospital, had said earlier that two of the wounded students were in critical condition and the third suffered injuries that were not life-threatening. He did not specify the condition of the suspect at the time.

Kelley said investigators had identified and had been able to have at least initial conversations with all three students who were shot, including the suspect, as well as the suspect’s parents, who were with him at the hospital. Blackwood said the families of all the students had been updated about their conditions.

Investigators had not been able to interview the shooter sufficiently to determine whether he knew the other two victims, Kelley said, adding that they would have to speak to hundreds of students to piece together what happened.

“This investigation will go on, we don’t know how long, it’s possible it will last days,” Marinelli said. “This was our people. This was our kids.”

Jeffco Public Schools Superintendent Tracy Dorland said she was devastated and angry about the shooting.

“No child should ever face this kind of danger and no community should be asked to absorb this kind of pain,” she said Wednesday evening.

‘I saw him shooting right at us’

Ethan Ramirez, 16, told The Denver Post he was eating lunch in Evergreen High’s cafeteria when an announcement on the intercom caught his attention, although he couldn’t quite hear the message.

Around him, other students started to walk out of the cafeteria. Then he heard a loud bang, he said, and he started to run.

“I heard gunshots right behind me,” he said. He sprinted out of the school, running as hard as he could. He crowded through a door with scores of other students, he said. As he ran along a dirt path, he looked over at the school, he said, and saw a person he thought was the shooter.

“He was walking, he wasn’t running,” Ethan said. “…I saw him shooting right at us.”

He and other students ran into a neighborhood, where they hid inside a stranger’s home, in a bathroom. The neighbor pulled out two guns to protect them, Ethan said. After a couple of hours, police officers collected them, he said.

“I’m a little shaken up. I’m pretty scared,” he said. He’s not sure he will feel safe back at school. “I’m paranoid now that something is going to happen,” he said.

Eighteen students who fled from the shooting took shelter at a home just down the road, after an initial group of them pounded on the door asking for help, resident Don Cygan told 9News.

Cygan, a retired educator familiar with lockdown trainings to prepare for possible shootings, said he took down the names of all the students and the names of the parents who later arrived there to pick them up. His wife, a retired nurse, was able to calm the teens down and treat them for shock, he said.

“I hope they feel like they ran to the right house,” he said.

‘The world we live in’

Students collected by their parents left the reunification site at Bergen Meadow Elementary, 1928 S. Hiwan Drive, in a trickle, some arm in arm, some sobbing. Some spoke about what they saw, what they did. Parents told children: “You’re OK.”

Emily Heidarsson, a 17-year-old senior, went home for lunch about 30 minutes before the attack, she said. She hugged friends in tears at the reunification site.

“It was just a normal (expletive) day and now it’s gone,” she said. “I was so close to not going home (for lunch). And if I didn’t, I could have died.”

She said the students haven’t had a lockdown drill yet this year — one that had been scheduled was canceled for a medical emergency. Her mom, Ivy Heidarsson, said her daughter came to the site because she was worried about her friends.

“You feel so helpless,” she said. “There is nothing we can do.”

Wendy Nueman’s 15-year-old daughter, a sophomore at the school, didn’t answer her phone right away after the shooting. When she finally called, it was from a borrowed phone.

“She just said she was OK. She couldn’t hardly speak,” Nueman said, holding back tears. She gathered that her daughter ran from the school.

“It’s super scary,” she said. “We feel like we live in a little bubble here. Obviously, no one is immune.”

Deborah Weingarten, who has three students at Evergreen High, said she made the normally 50-minute drive from her job in Denver to Evergreen in about 20 minutes, speeding up into the foothills as she watched ambulances come down.

One of her sons heard loud pops and ran away, she said. Another was stuck in the lockdown at the school. He was on the first bus of students brought to the reunification center.

“We’ve been dying inside just waiting,” she said, fighting back tears.

Tasha Williams, mom to a freshman student, said her daughter called about the shooter, frantic and searching for her friend. Williams told her to stay calm and stay put.

“I always taught them like if you hear anything, get down and pretend you are dead,” Williams said. “I shouldn’t have to do that. But that is the world we live in.”

Parents lined up on a sidewalk outside Bergen Meadow Elementary, waiting to reunite with their children, exchanging hugs and quiet conversation. Slowly, buses full of students trickled in. When the school sent out an emergency alert phone call, the simultaneous rings echoed up and down the line.

Following the first reports of the shooting, Blackwood, the St. Anthony’s trauma director, said the Lakewood hospital had about five to 10 minutes to prepare to receive a then-unknown number of victims from Evergreen.

“We weren’t sure exactly how many patients, so we prepared for multiple, and that allows us to take care of the patients very quickly when they came in,” he said, noting the patients arrived at the hospital simultaneously.

“I try and be straight and to the point, because I don’t want to beat around the bush about what’s going on,” the doctor said about speaking to the students’ families. “But, you know, as a father myself, I can put myself in their shoes, and kind of understand what they’re going through, and I just try and be supportive and caring to them in this time.”

The doctor noted that an Aug. 6 mass-shooting training involving the hospital and area law enforcement helped the staff to be as prepared as possible for Wednesday’s events.

‘Outraged that this continues to happen’

Dorland, the Jeffco superintendent, said she would do everything in her power to make sure her schools were safe.

“But we cannot do it alone,” she said. “Safety requires vigilance, partnership and the unflinching belief that our children deserve better. The nation is tired of statements filled with platitudes and thoughts and prayers.”

In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis said he was carefully monitoring the situation at Evergreen High and Colorado State Patrol troopers were on scene to support local law enforcement.

“Students should be able to attend school safely and without fear across our state and nation. We are all praying for the victims and the entire community,” Polis said.

U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, whose district includes Evergreen, said in a statement she was “shocked and heartbroken” to learn about the shooting.

“I’m hopeful that law enforcement is able to intervene and ensure all of our kids come home safe,” Pettersen said. “We are in communication with local law officials and will be there to support the Evergreen community.”

Law enforcement had cleared the high school as of 3:43 p.m., the sheriff’s office said.

Agents from the Denver division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI’s Denver field office also responded, officials said.

The shooting at Evergreen High is at least the seventh school shooting in Colorado since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School that killed 13 students and one teacher.