Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was partially paralyzed within the Columbine High School shooting but found strength to forgive and to heal her soul after bonding with one other family devastated by the tragedy, has died. She was 43.
Hochhalter was present in her home in suburban Denver on Sunday. Her family suspects she died of natural causes stemming from her injuries within the 1999 shooting by which 12 students and a teacher were killed.
The investigation into how she died has been transferred to the office that conducted the autopsies of those killed at Columbine, the coroner’s office for Adams and Broomfield counties said.
Hochhalter in 2016 wrote a letter to certainly one of the gunmen’s moms saying, “Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill,” and offering her forgiveness. Attending a vigil on the tragedy’s twenty fifth anniversary last 12 months — after skipping an identical event five years earlier — she said she was flooded with glad memories from her childhood and wanted those killed remembered for a way they lived, not how they died.
Hochhalter struggled with intense pain from her gunshot wounds over the past 25 years. Yet her brother said she was tireless in her drive to assist others — from individuals with disabilities to rescue dogs and members of her family.
“She was helpful to an amazing many individuals. She was really a great human being and sister,” her brother, Nathan Hochhalter, said Tuesday.
Her own tragedy was compounded six months after the shooting, when her mother, Carla Hochhalter, went right into a pawnshop, and asked to take a look at a gun before using it on herself.
Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the globe, join for breaking news alerts delivered on to you once they occur.
Within the wake of her mother’s death, Anne Marie Hochhalter was embraced by one other family who lost a daughter at Columbine.
Sue Townsend, whose stepdaughter, Lauren Townsend, was killed, reached out to assist Hochhalter as a way of easing her own pain. At first, Townsend took Hochhalter to doctor’s appointments and physical therapy, but their bond soon deepened as they got lunch and went shopping together and eventually began sharing family dinners and vacations.
Townsend and her husband, Rick, called Hochhalter their “acquired daughter.”
On a visit to Hawaii together, Hochhalter, who used a wheelchair, was in a position to float in a lagoon pain-free, she said.
“This relationship would never had happened if it hadn’t been for Columbine. So I attempted to concentrate on the gift that Columbine gave us in Anne Marie as an alternative of what it took away,” Townsend said.
In 2016, the mother of certainly one of the Columbine gunmen, Sue Klebold, released a memoir exploring the causes of her son’s violence and ways to forestall future attacks through mental health awareness. Hochhalter said on the time she was grateful that Klebold was donating the book proceeds to assist those with mental illness. Hochhalter said her mother suffered from depression and didn’t imagine the shootings were directly in charge for her death.
She said she was sure Klebold had agonized over what she could have done in another way just as she had thought of how she could have prevented the death of the mother she loved.
“A very good friend once told me, ‘Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the opposite person to die.’ It only harms yourself. I even have forgiven you and only wish you the very best,” Hochhalter said in a message she posted on Facebook. She also included a photograph of a card Sue and Tom Klebold sent to her as she recovered within the hospital after the shooting.
Hochhalter attended the twenty fifth anniversary vigil in April along with her brother, who was trapped in a classroom throughout the shooting. She had not attended the twentieth anniversary event due to post-traumatic stress disorder, she said in a social media post last 12 months.
“I’ve truly been in a position to heal my soul since that awful day in 1999,” she wrote.
