The Littleton Massacre: ...In Sorrow And Disbelief

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Someone in the choir room whispered, "Who's religious? Anybody in here religious?" The huddled students started to pray, very, very quietly. "I was terrified on the outside," says Craig Nason, a junior. "But on the inside, God gave me peace. I felt like many others outside the school were praying for us." The walls of the office kept shuddering with each shot and explosion, for an agonizing 20 minutes or so. Then things fell quiet, and they waited. When they reached the police by phone, pleading for rescue, they were told that the police had to move slowly because of possible booby traps. Some students with asthma started having trouble breathing, so others climbed up and pulled out some ceiling tiles, then lifted the students up to where the air was fresher. The quiet was cut when the office phone rang. It was the elementary school calling, wondering why the concert was being delayed.

Many of the kids who made it out the exits ran into the parking lots. Police had heard rumors that the gunmen were exchanging clothes with the students, so everyone had to be checked, patted down, in order for the cops to be sure these were the victims escaping and not the killers. Neighbors arrived with blankets, bandages and gauze and brought kids into their homes. A nurse passing through the area found herself doing triage on a front lawn. The ambulances began shuttling the wounded--the ones who had been able to get out of the building on their own power--to area hospitals. Senior SWAT team agent Donn Kraemer spotted a boy in a window, limp, bleeding, desperate to get out. "He looked at us but was oblivious," Kraemer said. "He was going to come out headfirst." Kraemer and another agent grabbed him and pulled him to safety. The boy, with gunshot wounds in the head and foot, was so much in shock that he could barely say his name. Rick or Rich, they thought he said. His name was Patrick Ireland. He had taken two bullets to the head. Last week the 17-year-old was in serious condition, suffering from impaired speech and damaged motor skills to his right side.

Among the countless offers of help that came in during the siege was one the police did not accept. Well before any potential suspects had been named publicly, Klebold's father contacted police, saying he thought his son might be involved and offering to help negotiate a surrender. The SWAT team leaders decided they didn't think he could be of any use.

All the while the killers were still inside, going about their business. And in the end, they did their deadliest work in the school's quiet place, the best place to find people in a school when finals are looming and everyone worries about getting term papers done on time.

A teacher, identified by police only as Peggy, made it into the library a few steps ahead of the killers. First she called the police. Then, over the phone, she could be overheard desperately trying to warn the kids. "There's a guy with a gun!" she yelled, bleeding. "Kids, under the table! Kids, stay on the floor! Oh, God. Oh, God--kids, just stay down!" At first, Craig Scott thought it was all a prank, maybe the teacher was in on it. But the noise was real, and the fear was real, and he ducked under a table with his friend Matt Kechter and one of Columbine's few black students, a senior named Isaiah Shoels. And they heard the gunmen come in.