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U.S.|Death Toll in 1999 Columbine School Shooting Climbs to 14 With Homicide Ruling
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/us/columbine-school-shooting-death-toll.html
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Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was paralyzed from the waist down when she was shot in the chest and back, died on Feb. 16. A coroner classified the death as a homicide.
March 13, 2025, 7:43 p.m. ET
For more than a quarter of a century, the death toll in the Columbine High School mass shooting, a statistic intertwined with the gun violence epidemic in the United States, stood at 13 victims.
But another name has now been added to the list: Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was a student at the time and was paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the shooting. Her death on Feb. 16 has been officially classified by a coroner in Colorado as a homicide, bringing the number of victims to 14.
In a 13-page autopsy report, Dr. Dawn B. Holmes, a forensic pathologist with the Jefferson County coroner’s office, linked Ms. Hochhalter’s death to the injuries that she suffered as a 17-year-old high school junior.
“Complications of paraplegia due to two (2) gunshot wounds are a significant contributing factor,” Dr. Holmes wrote.
The report, which was obtained on Thursday by The New York Times, said that Ms. Hochhalter had died from sepsis, an extreme immune response to an infection.
Twelve students and a teacher were killed when two heavily armed students opened fire at the school in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999, before taking their own lives. At the time, it was the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. It also left 21 other people wounded.
