He said authorities used explosives as they entered the classroom, only to
have the suspect fire at officers, shoot one of the girls and then himself.
Authorities were investigating whether any of the girls were sexually
assaulted, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.
School was canceled for the rest of the week at the high school and the
adjoining middle school.
The sheriff, a 36-year resident of Bailey, said he knew the slain girl's
family and was "scared to death" as he handled the hostage situation. He said
the gunman threatened the girls almost throughout the four-hour ordeal and at
one point fired a shot inside the classroom.
"I have to go and eventually I have to face a family about the fact that
their daughter is dead," Wegener quietly told reporters. "So, what would you
do?"
The lines of students fleeing the high school and middle school, the bomb
squads and the frantic parents scrambling to find their loved ones evoked
memories of the Columbine attack, where two students killed 13 people before
taking their own lives.
Michael Owens, who has one son at the middle school and another in the high
school, said the anxiety was worse because the memory of Columbine was still
fresh.
"Things that are out of your control, you just do what you can do," he said.
"It's like an earthquake."
The situation unfolded in a narrow, winding canyon carved by the South Platte
River about 35 miles southwest of Denver. Ambulances were parked in the end zone
of the football field and a tank-like SWAT team vehicle was parked nearby on a
closed-down highway swamped with gun-toting sheriff's officers and police.
Bill Twyford said he received a text message from his 15-year-old son Billy,
a student at the high school, at about 11:30 a.m. It said: "Hey there, there's a
gun hijacking in school right now. I'm fine, bad situation though."
Jessica Montgomery, 15, said she saw the suspect in a second-floor hallway
shortly before noon. She described him as "creepy," with acne and stubble on his
face. He motioned her to come over.
"I was like, 'the bell just rang,'" she said. "I was like, 'Why isn't he
going to class?' And then I was like, 'He's kind of old.'"
Sophomore Zack Barnes, 16, said his class moved to a room that turned out to
be next to the one where the hostages were being held. They turned out the
lights and sat in silence in the dark for about 20 minutes before police guided
them out.
"I was just praying it wasn't a mass killing," Barnes said.
The two schools have an enrollment of about 770 students, with 460 in the
high school. Students from both were taken by bus to another school for a head
count, and there were cheers from parents as their loved ones arrived.
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