Terrified girl survives, calls mom in tears

Last to leave school alive, fifth hostage 'strong,' parent says

Fernando Quintero, Charley Able And Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 28, 2006 at midnight

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BAILEY - The phone call came from the English classroom.

"Please, Mom," the terrified girl said through tears. "Come get me."

Then the phone went dead.

The 15-year-old was was the fifth hostage to be released from the classroom at Platte Canyon High School, her mother said.

The girl was the last one to make it out alive.

At that point the girl's mother had not yet heard the horrific news that a man in a hooded sweat shirt had taken the honors English class hostage.

The woman left her job at the restaurant she owns and headed toward the school - along with much of the town.

Soon she would learn that her daughter had survived. But not without scars.

The gunman sexually assaulted some of the six girls he held hostage in the classroom.

"She said he touched them," said the 15-year-old's younger sister, who also attends the school. The family's name is being withheld because of the possibility of sexual assault.

"Then he let the girls go one by one," the 13-year-old sister said.

The hostage told her sister that the gunman behaved oddly.

"She told me he had a backpack and that he kept taking T-shirts and a hooded sweat shirt (out) and kept taking them off and then putting them back on."

Earlier that day, an administrator broke through on the school's intercom.

"Code white," came the terse announcement.

But many students just shrugged.

"Code white? Nobody really knows what a code white is," said 14-year-old Mark Welch.

Down the road at Deer Creek Elementary School, where Platte Canyon teens were being bused, some administrators tried to calm the younger students by saying a bear had been spotted nearby.

At the the high school, students were told there was a lockdown and were ordered to return immediately to their classrooms.

In the room directly below the English classroom, students were asked by a teacher to lie quietly on the floor to protect them from possible stray bullets. They lay there for roughly 45 minutes, said sophomore Jessiah Bram.

"Nobody said anything," Jessiah said.

In a room next to the English class, junior Marina Escobedo said she feared for her life.

"This was the scariest thing I have ever been in.

"I was freaking out. Everyone was freaking out. We were in class and heard on the intercom 'Code white.' First we were thinking it was just a drill, but then we realized it wasn't. . . . He was in the room right next to us."

Thomas Suiter, a 15-year-old sophomore, said that earlier in the day he had seen the alleged gunman in the school, wearing a hoodie and carrying a camouflage backpack. -Thomas didn't make the connection until a deputy knocked on his classroom door.

"He tells us to come out into the hallway and said the SWAT team has got it covered here. So when we started heading (into the hallway) we hear all the screams downstairs," Thomas said.

"We all just got behind the cops, and after that we ran out down the stairs."

The 13-year-old sister of the fifth hostage said that she went with her grandfather and little sister to Deer Creek Elementary, where all the students were taken, to pick up her sister.

But she never came off the bus.

"My sister's friend pulled me aside and said, 'Your sister is a hostage,' " she said. "I cried."

After the ordeal, the 15-year-old ex-hostage spent Wednesday night at a friend's home, where her mother says she continues to draw strength from her classmates.

"I was nervous," the girl's mother said.

"I know now she's OK. Everything will be OK. . . . She's a strong girl. I'm strong, too."

Reactions

"It hit me. It hit me real hard. I am still in shock."

Jessica Leedom, 16, a junior.

"He blended right in. Everybody saw him, but we don't know who he is."

Lindsey Toler, a sophomore, who would have been in the classroom if she hadn't dropped the class.

"Mommy, 'Why were we in lockdown?' "

"We'll talk about it when we get home."

Conversation overheard between a mother and her elementary school student.

"We moved to the mountains to get away from stuff like this.' "

Tatia Kulla, while waiting for her 11th-grade son. She said the family home-schools their youngest child and now she's going to home-school her high school student.

"Y'know, for me personally, taking him alive and letting our tax money keep him in jail for the rest of his life . . . I'm glad that he's dead. Whatever the case may be, you don't wish people to die. But under the circumstances . . . he didn't have to come in and hurt any kids."

Tom Grigg, of Bailey, whose son Cassidy was in the classroom.

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