Shooting Bears Resemblance to Columbine High School Massacre
Feb. 25, 2010 — -- For many in the Columbine community, the frantic scene Tuesday afternoon at Deer Creek Middle School was one they know all too well: Parents running toward the school in tears, frightened students fleeing from the school building and teachers nobly directing masses through fresh snow banks to safety.
Jacqui Kelley, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department in Colorado, pointed out the "eerie" similarities between Tuesday's shooting that left three injured and the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that left 13 dead.
"As we approached the school and saw the cars parked everywhere, parents everywhere, students running, it was a moment of déjà vu," Kelley said. "It was terrible."
Each such incident jars the delicate psyche there and manifests itself in the form of jittery nerves and sleepless nights that many residents say they tolerate because it is, after all, home.
Kelley went through this in 1999 and then again in 2006, when a gunman rushed into the nearby Platt Canyon High School and held several students hostage before killing one and turning the gun on himself.
When reports surfaced Tuesday that shots had been fired at the middle school, three miles away from Columbine High School, Kelley said her heart sank.
"It absolutely sank," she said. "It was very surreal that we were dealing with this again."
The alleged gunman at Deer Creek, 32-year-old Bruco Eastwood, had been subdued by a teacher by the time authorities arrived, but had already sprayed students with gunfire from a high-power rifle, injuring a seventh-grader and an eighth-grader. Both victims are expected to recover.
But for others like Kelley, who lived in Littleton, Colo., during the Columbine shooting and have stayed there in the 11 years since, Tuesday's news triggered flashbacks of the fateful April day when the otherwise sleepy high school became the site of one of the country's deadliest shootings.
