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The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Each week, The Murder Book will present unsolved cases, missing persons, notorious crimes, controversial cases, and serial killers, exploring details of the crime scenes and the murderer's childhood. Some episodes are translated into Spanish as well. The podcast is produced and hosted by Kiara Coyle.
The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Unravelling the Columbine Tragedy Stories of Resilience from the Columbine Tragedy Part 3
What if your entire world changed in a single afternoon? On April 20, 1999, Columbine High School became the epicenter of a tragedy that reshaped how we view safety and crisis management in schools. Today, we take you through that intense day as misinformation and fear gripped a community desperate for answers. Parents and authorities grappled with the chaos, as cell phones, then a new technology, created an unprecedented flow of communication yet added layers of confusion. Witness the emotionally charged scenes from outside the school, where families waited and hoped for signs of their children amidst the turmoil.
Experience the bravery that emerged from this darkest of days, as teachers and students exhibited profound courage in the face of unimaginable horror. You'll hear about Mr. D, a teacher who led his students to safety with a blend of quick-thinking and humor, breaking the tension in moments of peril. Meanwhile, authorities worked tirelessly amid the misinformation, striving to protect and rescue those trapped inside. The episode also sheds light on the heart-wrenching journey of families like John and Kathy, as their frantic search for their son unfolded against a backdrop of fear and uncertainty.
The resilience of the human spirit shines through in Patrick Ireland's remarkable story, as he defied the odds to survive despite severe injuries. His agonizing crawl to escape and the desperate rescue efforts that followed paint a vivid picture of determination and hope. As we recount these stories, we honor the strength and spirit shown by all those affected. Join us for an unforgettable narrative that not only chronicles a tragic chapter in history but also celebrates the courage and resilience that emerged from it.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is part three of the tragedy at Columbine on April 20th 1999. Let's begin. Around 1 pm, word filtered out to reporters that kids were trapped in the building. The situation had escalated into a hostage standoff, not telling what the assailants might try. Where were they? The captives seemed to be held in the commons, but reports conflicted.
Speaker 1:Word of the ambulance scenes and the hostage standoff traveled quickly to Leawood and to the public library where parents grew tenser by their work together, exchanging information and passing around their cell phones. It was tough to get a signal. They pounded at them furiously, grilling neighbors, updating relatives, leaving messages for their children on every conceivable answering machine. Some would hit redial as they swapped information face to face, buzzing their own homes, praying that the machine wouldn't pick up this time. Misty kept calling Brad and still no word on Chris or Cassie.
Speaker 1:Then a fresh story slipped through the pack 20 students, or 30 or 40, were still inside the school. They were not hostages. They were hiding, barricaded in the choir room with equipment piled high against the door, and the parents, of course, gasped. Was the good news or was that bad news? Dozens more students were in danger, but dozens more confirmed alive. If it was true, a lot of wild rumors had already gone and people were confused. At this point, at least two to three hundred students were hiding in the school in classrooms and utility closets under tables and desks. Some had rigged up protection, others were right out in the open. Everyone was afraid to move. A great number whispered cautiously into cell phones, many clustered around classroom TVs. They heard banging and crashing and the deafening screech of the fire alarm.
Speaker 1:Cnn carried a live call between a local anchor and a student alone under a desk. What was he hearing? The same thing as you. The student said. I got a little TV and I'm watching you guys right now. For four hours there were rumors, confirmations, embellishments that bounced in and out. The cops were livid. Reporters had no idea. Hundreds of kids were trapped inside and no concept of the echo chamber in full bloom.
Speaker 1:The cops knew the detective force was assembling teams to interview every survivor and they knew hundreds of their best witnesses were still inside, getting compromised by the minute, but the cops had no means to stop it. This was the first major hostage standoff of the cell phone age and they had never seen anything like it. At the moment. They were more concerned with information passing to the shooters. Sometimes the kids' revelations scare reporters On live TV.
Speaker 1:A boy described sounds he took to be the gunman and he said I hear stuff being thrown around. I'm staying underneath this desk. I don't know if they know I'm up here. I'm just staying upstairs for right now and I just hope they don't know. The uncle woman interrupted and asked don't tell us where you are. And the boy described more commotion. And he says there's a little bunch of people crying outside. I can hear them downstairs. And then something crashed and the anchor gasped and asked what was that? And the boy said I don't know. The anchors had enough. Her partner told him to hang up, keep quiet and try to reach 911. And he said keep trying to call them, okay. And that was the end of the call. The cops pleaded with the TV stations to stop. Please ask the hostages to quit calling the media. Tell them to turn off the televisions. The stations aired their requests and continued broadcasting the calls and one anchored, implored and said If you're watching kids turn the TV off or down, at least Much of the country was watching the standoff unfold, myself included.
Speaker 1:None of the earlier school shootings had been televised. Few American tragedies had the Columbine situation play out slowly, with the cameras rolling, or at least it appeared that way. The cameras offered the illusion that we were witnessing the event, but the cameras had arrived too late. Eric and Dylan had retreated inside after five minutes and the cameras missed the outside murders and could not follow Eric and Dylan inside. The fundamental experience for most of America was almost witnessing mass murder. It was the panic and frustration of not knowing the mounting terror of horror withheld just out of view. We would learn the truth about Columbine, but we would not learn it, you know at that moment and that today.
Speaker 1:There were fragments. What the cameras showed was misleading. There was an army of police held at bay, suggested an equivalent force inside. Hysterical witnesses corroborated that image, describing widely different assaults. Killers seemed to be everywhere. Cell phone callers confirmed the killers remained active. They provided unimpeachable evidence of gunfire from inside the attack zone.
Speaker 1:The data was correct. The conclusions were wrong. Swat teams were on the move. The narrative unfolding on television looked nothing like the killer's plan. It would take months for investigators to piece together what had gone on inside. Motive would take longer to unravel. It would be years before the detective team would explain why the public couldn't wait that long. The media was not about to. They speculated An investigative team had assembled before noon.
Speaker 1:Kate Batten was named lead investigator. Batten already knew who her primary suspects were. Most of the students were perplexed about who was attacking them, but quite a few had recognized the gunman. Two names had been repeated over and over. Batten quickly compiled dossiers on Eric and Dylan in the command post trailer in Clement Park. She dispatched teams to secure their homes.
Speaker 1:Detectives arrived at the Harris place at 1.15, just as the third SWAT team burst into the Columbine teacher's lounge. Eric's parents had gotten word and were already home. The cops found them uncooperative. They tried to refuse entrance. The cops insisted. Kathy Harris got scared when they headed for the basement and she said I don't want you going down there. They said they were securing the residence and removing everyone. Wayne said that he doubted Eric was involved but would help if there was an active situation. Kathy's twin sister was with her. Wayne and Kathy Harris were concerned about the precautions. She explained Parents of the victims might retaliate. The cops smelled gas and they had the utility company shut off power and then resumed the search. In Eric's room they found a saw-off shotgun barrel on a bookshelf, unspent ammunition on the bed, fingertips cut off, gloves on the floor and fireworks and bomb materials on the desk, the dresser, the windowsill and the wall. Among other places Elsewhere they discover a page from the anarchist cookbook packaging for a new gas can and scatterglass shards on a slab in the backyard.
Speaker 1:An evidence specialist arrived that night and spent four hours shooting seven rolls of film and he left around 1 am. The Cleberts were much more forthcoming. A police report described them as very communicative. He gave a full account of Dylan's past and laid out all his friendships. Dylan had been in good spirits, according to Tom. Sue described him as extremely happy. Tom was anti-gun and Dylan agreed with him on that. They wouldn't find any guns or explosives in the house. That was for sure, according to Tom. But the cops did find pipe bombs. Tom was shocked and he kept insisting Dylan is fine. Dylan was fine. He and Dylan were close. He had known it if anything was up.
Speaker 1:The first FBI agent on the scene at Columbine was Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier. He was a veteran agent, a clinical psychologist, a terrorism expert and one of the leading hostage negotiators in the country. None of that led Dr Fusilier to Columbine High. His wife had called. Their son was in the school. Dr Fusilier got the call in the cafeteria of Denver's Rogers Federal Building, a downtown high-rise 30 minutes away. Fusilier headed toward the foothills. He would offer his services as a hostage, negotiator or anything else they might need. He wasn't sure how his offer would be received. Cops in crisis tend to be thrilled to have a trained negotiator, but wary of the feds. Hardly anyone likes the FBI and Fusilier didn't blame them. Federal agents generally had a high opinion of themselves. Few tried to conceal it.
Speaker 1:Fusilier didn't look like a fed or sound depart. He was a shrink-turned-hostage-negotiator-turned-detective with an abridged version of the complete works of Shakespeare in the backseat of his car. He didn't talk past the local cops for his eyes or humor them. There was no swagger in his shoulders or his speech. He could be a little stoic. Smiling came easy. His jokes were frequently at his own expense. He genuinely liked local cops and appreciated what they had to offer. They like him, what they had to offer, they like him.
Speaker 1:A stint on the domestic terrorism task force for the region proved lucky because it was a joint operation between local agencies and the FBI. Fusilier led the unit and a senior Jeffco detective worked on his team. The detective was one of Fusilier's first calls. He was relieved to hear that Duane was on his way and offered to introduce him to the commanders on arrival. The detective brought Fusilier up to speed before he arrived at the school. There were reports of six or eight gunmen in black masks and military gear shooting everyone. He assumed it was a terrorist attack.
Speaker 1:It took a certain voice to talk down a gunman. Agent Fusilier was always gentle and reassuring. He exuded tranquility, offered a way out. He trained negotiators to read a subject quickly to size up his primary motivations. Was the gunman driven by anger, fear or resentment? Was he on a power trip? Was the assault meant to feed his ego or was he caught up in events beyond his control? Getting the gun down was primarily a matter of listening.
Speaker 1:The first thing Fusilier taught negotiators was to classify the situation as hostage or non-hostage. To laymen, humans at gunpoint, equal hostages, not so. Jesco officials had labeled Columbine a hostage standoff. Every media outlet was reporting it that way. Dr Fusilier considered the chances of that remote. What he was driving toward was much worse. Been toured was much worse.
Speaker 1:To the FBI the non-hostage distinction is critical. The Bureau recommends radically different strategies in those cases. Essentially the opposite approach. With hostages, negotiators remain highly visible, make the gunman work for everything and firmly establish that the police are in control. In non-hostess situations they keep a low profile. Give a little without getting in return, for example, offering cigarettes to build rapport. Avoid even a slight implication that anyone but the gunman is in control. The goal with hostages is to gradually lower expectations, but in non-hostage crises it's to lower emotions.
Speaker 1:One of the first things Fusilier did when he arrived was organize a negotiation team. He found local officers he had trained and fellow FBI negotiators responded as well. A neighboring county loaned them a section of its mobile command post already on scene. The 911 operators were instructed to put through to the team all calls from kids inside the building. Anything they could learn about the gunmen might be useful. They passed on logistical information they gathered to the tactical teams. The team was confident that they could talk the gunman down. All they needed was someone to speak to.
Speaker 1:Fusilier shuttled between the negotiation center and the Jeffco command post, coordinating the federal response. When things calmed down momentarily, fusilier pitched in questioning students who had just escaped the school. He walked over to the triage unit flipped through the logs. They had evaluated hundreds of kids. He scanned for kids he knew from the neighborhood or the boys' soccer teams, and everyone he recognized said, evaluated and released. He called their parents as soon as he got a break. But his son's name never came up and Agent Fusilier was grateful to have his hands full. And you know, his thoughts later was that he had to work. So he had work to do. He compartmentalized, he focused on that, kept him wondering about his own son, brian.
Speaker 1:An attack of this magnitude suggested a large conspiracy. Of course Everyone, including detectives, assumed a substantial number were involved. The first break in the presumed conspiracy seemed to come early. The killer's good friend, chris Morris, reported himself to 911. He had seen the news on TV while he was home playing Nintendo with another friend. At first he was worried about his girlfriend and his Nintendo. Buddy's dad was a science teacher in the building.
Speaker 1:The two boys hopped in the car, raced around trying to find Chris's girlfriend. They kept running into police barricades and collecting scraps of information along the way. When Hugh heard about the trench coats, chris got scared. He knew Eric and Dylan had guns. He knew they had been messing with pipe bombs and then he asked the question for this. So Chris called 911. He got disconnected. It took a few tries, but he told his story and the dispatcher sent a patrol car by the house. The cops questioned him briefly and then decided to drive him out to the main team in Clement Park. There was a lot of confusion. Who was this kid? Chris Harris, a detective asked and pretty soon he was surrounded by detectives and cameraman noticed. So TV crews of course came running and of course Chris was overwhelmed. The cops cuffed him fast and got him into the back of a patrol car and by now many of the killer's buddies suspected them. And it was a scary time to be Eric's or Dylan's friend.
Speaker 1:From the outset, before they even had names or identities for the gunmen, tv reporters depicted the boys as a single entity. Were they loners? Were they outcasts? Always they, and always the attributes fitting the school shooter profile, itself a myth. The witnesses nearly always concur Few knew the killers, but they did not volunteer that information and they were not asked and they would say, yeah, they were outcasts. I heard they were.
Speaker 1:So now Fusilier arrived at Columbine with one assumption Multiple gunmen demanded multiple tactics. Fusilier couldn't afford to think of his adversaries as a unit. Strategies likely to disarm one shooter could infuriate the other. Mass murderers tend to work alone, but when they did pair up they rarely chose their mirror image. Fusilier knew he was much more likely to find a pair of opposites hole up in that building. It was entirely possible that there was no single why and much more likely that he would unravel one motive for Eric and another motive for Dylan.
Speaker 1:Reporters quickly keyed on the darker force behind the attack, the spooky Trench Coal Mafia. It grew more bizarre by the minute. In the first two hours witnesses on CNN described the Trench Coal Mafia as goth gays, outcasts and a street gang. None of that would prove to be true. That student did not in fact knew the people he was describing. But the story grew. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Danny Robo had been second to die. As Eric was taking aim at him on the sidewalk, danny's stepsister was in the building and headed toward him. Nicole Patron had changed into her gym uniform. While the bombs were being laid. It was a nice day and her class was going outside to play softball. And just as Eric finished shooting at Deputy Gardner, the lead girls in Nicole's class turned the corner toward them. Mr D arrived in the hallway at the same moment at the opposite end from the killers. She'd just been alerted to the shooting and had come running to investigate. The girls had not been warned. Mr D spotted Dylan and Eric coming in the west doors and the girls blundering into their path. They were laughing and giggling and getting ready to walk right into it. According to Mr D, the killers fired Bullets, soared past the girls, the trophy case just behind Mr D shattered and he assumed that he was a dead man. So he ran straight into the gunfire screaming lot.
Speaker 1:Mr D had the key on a chain in his pocket, that's two dozens just. He had no idea what and at this moment he's thinking he's coming around the corner and we are trapped. If I don't get these doors open, we are trapped, we are trapped. And he was able to reach in, grab the random key and lock key. For him it fit.
Speaker 1:He ushered the girls into the gym and scouted around for a hiding place. They could hear bombs and gunfire and he could only imagine the hell going on outside. He spotted a door on the far wall. There was a storage room behind it with cages piled with gym equipment. So he unlocked the door and let them in. And he told them You're going to be fine, I'm not going to let anything happen to you, but I need to get us out of here, so I'm going to shut the door behind me. You do not open the door for anyone.
Speaker 1:And then he had an idea why didn't they come up with a code word? So someone suggested the word orange and somebody said no, no, rebels. And so a few of them start quarreling about the keyword. So Mr D even couldn't believe what was happening and he started laughing and the girls then started laughing too and that broke the tension for a moment. So he locked them in the storeroom, crossed the gym, creaked open the outside door, poke his head out and he saw other kids coming out and teachers and then a Jeffco sheriff. His car came over that environment flying and he told some of the teachers I have to go back in there. There are kids in there. So he told the police officer after he got out and he explained. He said you go in.
Speaker 1:So Mr D brought Nicole's class back out to the same spot with the same cop, but by now he had realized there were hundreds more still inside and he began saying I'm going. And the deputy cuffed him off. He said no, no one is going back in. So Mr D led the class across a field over a series of minor obstacles, across a field over a series of minor obstacles, and he stopped at a chain link fence to boost them over. Other girls assisted from the far side and he started saying go over the fence, girls, go over the fence. And when the last girl was over they ran across the field until they felt safe.
Speaker 1:Mr D found the command post and drew diagrams of the hallways for the SWAT teams and he also described what he saw and what he had seen. And he remembered a guy with a baseball cap turned backward. And Mr D recalled later. He said they kept saying these guys were in trench coats and I kept saying these guys were not in trench coats. He had a baseball cap turned backwards.
Speaker 1:Eventually Mr D headed to Leawood to be with the kids. He met his wife there, his brother and a close friend and of course tears streamed down everyone's cheeks except Frank's. That was odd because Frank had always been the emotional one, but the first symptom of PTSD was already taking hold. He felt nothing and he said later I felt like I was a zombie. In the meantime there was John and Kathy. Ireland that knew that Patrick had a lunch but he always ate out.
Speaker 1:So John went looking for Patrick's car. He knew Patrick's spot. If the car was gone, his boy was safe. A deputy stopped him at the perimeter and John Beckett said Please. He promised not to walk as far as the school, but if I can just get to the parking lot. But pleading was useless. John knew the neighborhood so he tried another approach, but that one was Block 2, so he headed back to Leawood. Kids kept pouring in there. Mostly the auditorium was filled with parents seeking kids, but there were also kids without parents. John saw several in tears and he chatted with them and they perked up. John and Kathy were happy to see kids find their parents, but every reunion raised the odds. Their boy was in trouble. Somebody's kids were in those ambulances. John and Kathy refused to indulge in negative thoughts.
Speaker 1:John found lots of Patrick's friends, but nobody had seen him. Who was he with? Why hadn't they called? So Patrick had gone to the library to finish his homework and four friends had joined him. None of them had called the Ireland's because every one of them had been shot In the meantime, agent Dwayne Fusilier was also having no luck locating his son.
Speaker 1:His wife, mimi, had given up on the public library and had run over to Leawood. There were many more kids there but none had seen Brian. Dwayne had access to a growing army of law enforcement, but it didn't do him a lick of good. Cops kept an ear out for word of Brian, but none came. Fusilier also had the advantage of knowing a great number of kids were alive and well in the building. He had spoken to many personally and continued picking their brains about the killers. He was one of the few parents aware of the full danger. Two bodies had been lying outside the cafeteria for hours. He didn't know they were Danny Rorbo or Rachel Scott, but he knew they had not been moving and then he heard the dispatch announcements indicating they were dead. Others described the one bleeding to death sign in science room number three.
Speaker 1:Mimi monitored the stage at Leawood where talk of death and murder were verboten. She scored the signing sheets, worked the crowd. Dwayne checked in every 15 minutes by cell but did not mention the murders and she did not inquire For 90 minutes of chaos. The gunman seemed to be over the school simultaneously and then it quieted down to be over the school simultaneously. And then it quieted down. The killer still appeared to be roaming, firing at will, but the gunfire was sporadic. Now no one was staggering out wounded. The injured had reached the hospitals. It had taken an hour to get most of them out of the building through the triage center and into ambulances. Between 1 and 2.30 pm the injury count fluctuated between 8 and 18, depending upon which station you were watching. The numbers buried but kept rising.
Speaker 1:A sheriff's spokesman announced that SWAT teams had spotted more students trapped in the building lying on the floor, apparently injured. Suddenly, at 1.44 pm, the cops finally nabbed someone. He said we got three students with their hands up with two police cars around them. A reporter told CNN their hands were up, the cops detained them at gunpoint. Word spread quickly to the library and a woman screamed it's over, they surrender. They celebrated there briefly, but the truth trickled back slowly.
Speaker 1:Just before 2.30, an officer riding along in a news chopper spotted somebody moving inside the library. He was just inside the blown out windows, covered in blood and behaving curiously, sagging against the frame, clearing away charts of glass. He was going to jump. So the officer radioed a swap team and they revved the Loomis armored truck and raced toward the building and one of them called hang on, kid, we're coming to get you. It was Patrick Garland. And Patrick Garland was confused. He heard someone yell but couldn't see anyone or figure out where the voices were coming from, because he was feeling dizzy. His vision was blurry and one big section was blank, so he was unaware that blood was streaming down into his eyes. And the shouting inside his head was more important. His voice in his head was telling him to get out, get out. But the model outside yelling had caught his attention. Why were they talking so slowly? Because everything was deep and mumbly, like his head was underwater and he was not sure where was he and something had happened and something horrible and shot. And then that voice again get out, get out.
Speaker 1:Hours earlier, patrick Ireland had taken refuge under the table with his friends Makai and Dan and a girl he didn't know. Corey and Austin had gone to investigate and ended up somewhere unknown. Patrick put his head down and closed his eyes. The shooting was barely underway in the library when he heard Makai moan. So Patrick opened his eyes and Makai's knee was bleeding. So Patrick opened his eyes and Mackay's knee was bleeding. Patrick leaned over to administer pressure and the top of his head poked over the edge of the tabletop. Dylan saw him and fired the shotgun.
Speaker 1:Again, patrick went blank. Patrick's skull had stopped. Several buckshot fragments, other debris lodged in his scalp as well his scalp, I should say and probably with splinters torn from the tabletop in the blast. One pellet got through it, burrowed six inches through spongy brain matter, entering through the scalp just above his hairline on the left and lodging near the middle rear. Bits of his optical center were missing.
Speaker 1:Most of his language capacity was wiped out. He regained consciousness, but words were hard to form and difficult to interpret as well. Pathways for all sorts of functions had been severed. Perception was impeded so he couldn't tell when he was speaking gibberish or jumbling incoming sounds. The left brain controls the right side of the body and the palate cut through that connection. So Patrick was paralyzed on the right side. He had been shot in the right foot. It was broken and bleeding, but he didn't even know. He felt nothing on that side, patrick. He drifted in and out.
Speaker 1:He was semi-conscious when the killers left the room. He was semi-conscious when the killers left the room. All the kids were running for the back exit. Makai and Dan tried to get his attention but he returned a blank stare and one of them said let's go. Come on, man. And it didn't register. They tried to drag him but both had been shot in the legs and Patrick was limp. They got nowhere. The killers could return any moment, so eventually they gave up and fled.
Speaker 1:Sometime later Patrick woke up on the floor again and that voice again get out, get out. He tried to get out, but half his body refused. He tried to get out, but half his body refused. He couldn't stand. He couldn't even crawl right. He reached with his left hand, gripped something and dragged himself forward. His useless side trailed behind. He made a little progress and his brain gave out.
Speaker 1:He came to repeatedly and began again. No one knows how many times, but a bloody trail revealed his convoluted path. He started less than two table lengths from the windows, but he headed off in the wrong direction. Then he hit obstacles, bodies, table legs and chairs. Some he pushed away, others have to be maneuvered around. He kept heading for the light. If he could just make it to the window, maybe someone would see him. If he had to, maybe he would jump.
Speaker 1:It took three hours to get there. He found an easy chair beside the opening. It was sturdy enough not to tip and might provide cover if the killers returned. He wedged his back against the short wall and worked himself upward, then grabbed hold of the chair for a final push. He propped himself against the girdle between two large panes and rested a while to recover his strength, and then he flipped around. He had one more task before he took the plunge.
Speaker 1:The problem was that Patrick couldn't jump. There was a waist-high window ledge to get over. The best he could do was to lean forward and tumble over it headfirst onto the sidewalk. His gut would bear down on the cell as he rolled it. It was a jagged mess. The gun blast, had blown out most of the glass but left shards clinging around the frame. Patrick stood on one leg, braced his shoulder against the girder, and picked away the chunks with the same hand. He was meticulous because he didn't want to get hurt. That's when he heard the murky voices Stay there, we're going to get you. And this is the armored truck.
Speaker 1:The armored truck pulled up beneath the window and a squadron of SWAT officers leaped out. Nearby teams provided cover from either side. One group took aim from behind a fire truck. Snipers brought on rooftops trained their scopes from further back. If this rescue mission was fired upon, they would be ready. Patrick wasn't waiting. He thought he was. He remembers them calling OK, it's safe, go ahead and jump, we'll catch you. But the rescue team recalls it differently and the video shows them still scrambling into place.
Speaker 1:Patrick collapsed forward, the ledge caught him at the waist and he folded in half, head dangling toward the ground. The SWAT team wasn't ready, but Patrick was frantic and didn't understand. He wiggled forward but couldn't get much traction from the inside because his feet were already up off the floor. A SWAT officer clambered up the side of the truck and threw his weapon to the ground. Another followed close behind him.
Speaker 1:As the first man hit the truck roof, patrick kicked his good leg up toward the ceiling and reached down for the sidewalk with his arms. That nearly did it. One more thrust and he would be free. The officers lunged toward him and each man caught one of his hands. Patrick kicked again completely vertical and his hips pulled away from the frame. The officers clenched and his hands barely moved. The rest of his body spun around like a gymnast gripping the high bar, until he walked into the side of the truck.
Speaker 1:The officers kept hold and eased him down into the hood. He tried to break away, still desperate to flee. They lowered him down to other officers but he kicked hard and his legs slammed against the ground. They pulled him upright. He tried to climb into the front seat. The SWAT team was confused. What was he trying to do? They assumed he understood he was the patient. He tried to climb into the front seat. The SWAT team was confused. What was he trying to do? They assumed he understood he was the patient. He did not. He had to get out of there. Here was a truck. He was ready to go. They got him to a triage site and then straight into the ambulance.
Speaker 1:On the drive to St Anthony's Central Hospital, paramedics cut off Patrick's bloody clothes, everything but his undershorts. They removed his gold necklace with the water ski pendant. He had six dollars in his wallet. He was not wearing shoes. They confirmed gunshot wounds to his left forehead and his right foot, as well as a number of superficial wounds about his head. His elbow was lacerated.
Speaker 1:As they worked they tested Patrick's mental acuity and tried to keep him conscious and they would keep asking him do you know where you are, what's your name, your birthday? But Patrick could answer those questions, but it was slowly, laboriously. The answers were easy, but he struggled to form them into words. Most of his brain tissue was intact. Sections could function in isolation, but the connecting circuitry was confused. Patrick's brain was less successful. Forming new memories was confused. Patrick's brain was less successful forming new memories.
Speaker 1:He knew he had been shot by a man in black with a long gun. That was true. The mask he described on the killer's faces were not. He insisted. He had been shot at a hospital, in the emergency room. Speech was a problem. Only one side of his mouth moved and his brain was inconsistent in retrieving information. Sometimes it got stuck. He gave them all 10 digits of his phone number, but his first name was nearly impossible. All he would say was paaa, paaa, and he couldn't finish the Patrick and he couldn't finish the Patrick. It sounded like a droning stream of nonsense. And then the second syllable spat out, suddenly Clear and distinctive Rick, and it was like it sounded more like Rick Ireland and that also caused considerable confusion later, because they have a Rick Ireland instead of Patrick Ireland.
Speaker 1:Just before Patrick's rescue, president Clinton addressed the nation. He asked all Americans to pray for students and teachers in that school. As CNN cut back from the White House, an anchor spotted Patrick and he said look, there's a bloody student right there in the window and it played out on live TV. Patrick's eighth-grade sister, maggie, watched and he was so bloody that she didn't recognize him. Viewers were stunned but it didn't make much of an impression at the rendezvous points.
Speaker 1:News of a kid falling out the window never reached most parents, including John and Kathy. They might have gone on searching for hours if Kathy had not asked a neighbor to run by the house to check the answering machine. The neighbor found endless messages from Kathy checking for Patrick, plus a recent one from St Anthony's that says we have your son, please call. Kathy was conflicted because she felt scared. My son's alive. My son is hurt, but I was relieved to have something to deal with. She said she felt much better when she got a nurse on the phone. They explained to her that it was a head wound, but Patrick was awake and alert. He had provided his name and phone number and John felt grave danger, no relief, and he said that he just figured anybody shot in the head cannot be good.
Speaker 1:So John drove the couple to the hospital. He was a computer programmer who prided himself on his navigational skill. He was too upset to find the hospital. He knew exactly how to get to St Anthony, he said. But he said, am I driving down Wadsworth and I can't remember where the hell it is? So they sat side by side, presuming they shared the same basic assumptions. It was seven years before they discovered that they arrived at St Anthony's in completely different mindsets. Jack was wracked with guilt and he said there should have been something I was able to do to protect him. He said John knew it was irrational, but years later it still haunted him.
Speaker 1:Kathy focused on the present. How could she help Patrick now? But no one even knew exactly what was wrong. Staff kept coming in to check on them, filling them in on the surgery. What to expect in Patrick and themselves? They know that their brain cells do not regenerate, but the brain can sometimes work around them, they were told. No one really understands how the brain reroutes its neural pathways, so there is no procedure to assist it.
Speaker 1:A projectile to the brain tends to cause two sets of damage. First it rips away tissue that can never be restored. One path might cause blindness another logical impairment. But the secondary impact can be just as bad or worse. The brain is saturated with blood, so gunshots tend to unleash a flood. As fluid builds, oxygen is depleted and the pool costs off fresh supplies, brain tissue is choked off by the very cells designed to nourish it. So Patrick's doctors feared that as he had lain on the library floor, his brain had been drowning in its own blood. So in other words, patrick Allen had brain damage, and that was a fact. His symptoms indicated severe impairment. The only question was whether those functions could return. So they scheduled surgery to take about an hour, but it lasted more than three.
Speaker 1:It was after 7 pm when the surgeon came out to advise John and Kathy of the results. He had cleared out buckshot fragments and debris from the surface. One pellet had penetrated Patrick's skull. It was far too perilous to dig out that lead. Would that lead, I should say, would be in him for the rest of his life? It was hard to tell how much damage the pellet had wreaked, and swelling was the main indicator and it looked bad. And then, in the meantime, as one SWAT team rescued Patrick Ireland, another squad reached the choir room and the rumor was true. Sixty students were barricaded inside. A few minutes later, 60 more were discovered in the science area. Swat teams led them through the hallways, down the stairs, across the commons.
Speaker 1:At 2.47, three and a half hours into the siege, the first of those kids burst out the cafeteria doors. News choppers homed in on them instantly. The anchors and the TV audience were perplexed. Where were these kids coming from? More follow, single-filed, in quick succession, running down the hillside as fast as they could, with their hands on the backs of their heads, elbows splayed. They kept coming and coming, dozens of them tracing the same winding path, first away from the school, then back to a windowless corner surrounded by squad cars and ambulances. They huddled there for several minutes, sobbing, waiting, clinging to one another. Police officers patted them down then hugged them.
Speaker 1:Eventually, cops packed groups of three to five kids into squad cars, shuttled them to the triage area a few blocks south. The kids had to run right past two bodies on the way out, so at some point an officer moved Rachel. Further away, the SWAT team reached the one bleeding to death sign on the same sweep through the science area that free all those kids. The sign was still against the window. The carpet inside room three was soaked in blood and the teacher was alive, but barely. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. To be continued, have a great week.
