By Katie Langford, Lauren Penington, Shelly Bradbury, Seth Klamann and Elliott Wenzler
The Denver Post
EVERGREEN, Colo. — At least 3 students, including a suspected shooter, were being treated at a Denver-area hospital Wednesday following a shooting at Evergreen High School in the Jefferson County foothills, officials said.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers responded to the school at 29300 Buffalo Park Road after a 911 caller reported an active shooting at 12:24 p.m., Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jacki Kelley said at a briefing Wednesday.
The suspected shooter, a juvenile male student at the school, was among the three with gunshot wounds. Kelley did not say whether he shot himself, but she said no law enforcement officers fired their weapons Wednesday.
No additional information about the suspect was available.
“This is the scariest thing that could ever happen, and these parents were really frightened, and so were the kids,” Kelley said. “And I know we say ‘never again,’ and here we are.”
It’s not clear where the shooting started, but investigators have found areas inside and outside of the school where shots were fired, Kelley said. She said the suspect used a handgun in the shooting, but she could not be more specific about the type of weapon.
Jefferson County Sheriff Reggie Marinelli said deputies were on scene in two minutes. There was no school resource officer on the campus at the time of the shooting.
Kelley said the investigation will focus on the suspect, including his locker, car, home and social media, to learn more about him.
Dr. Brian Blackwood, the trauma program medical director at CommonSpirit St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, said two of the students were in critical condition Wednesday evening and the third had injuries that were not life-threatening. He did not specify the condition of the suspect.
Hospital officials had earlier said all three were in critical condition. At least one was in surgery late Wednesday afternoon, another hospital spokesperson, Lindsay Foster, said.
Kelley said investigators had identified and had at least initial conversations with all three students who were shot, including the suspect, as well as the suspect’s parents, who were with him.
She said investigators had not been able to interview the suspect sufficiently to determine whether he knew the other two victims, and said they would have to interview hundreds of students to piece together what happened.
“This investigation will go on, we don’t know how long, it’s possible it will last days,” Marinelli said. “This was our people. This was our kids.”
‘I saw him shooting right at us’
Ethan Ramirez, 16, told The Denver Post he was eating lunch in Evergreen High’s cafeteria when an announcement on the intercom caught his attention, although he couldn’t quite hear the message.
Around him, other students started to walk out of the cafeteria. Then he heard a loud bang, he said, and he started to run.
“I heard gunshots right behind me,” he said. He sprinted out of the school. As he ran along a dirt path, he looked over at the school, he said, and saw a person he thought was the shooter.
“He was walking, he wasn’t running,” Ethan said. “…I saw him shooting right at us.”
He and other students ran into a neighborhood, where they hid inside a stranger’s home, in a bathroom. The neighbor pulled out two guns to protect them, Ethan said. After a couple of hours, police officers collected them, he said.
“I’m a little shaken up. I’m pretty scared,” he said.
He’s not sure he will feel safe back at school. “I’m paranoid now that something is going to happen,” he said.
‘The world we live in’
Students collected by their parents left the reunification site at Bergen Meadow Elementary, 1928 S. Hiwan Drive, in a trickle, some arm in arm, some sobbing. Some talked about what they saw, what they did. Parents told children: “You’re OK.”
Emily Heidarsson, a 17-year-old senior, went home for lunch about 30 minutes before the attack, she said. She hugged friends in tears at the reunification site.
“It was just a normal (expletive) day and now it’s gone,” she said. “I was so close to not going home (for lunch). And if I didn’t, I could have died.”
She said the students haven’t had a lockdown drill yet this year — one scheduled was canceled for a medical emergency. Her mom, Ivy Heidarsson, said her daughter came to the site because she was worried about her friends.
“You feel so helpless,” she said. “There is nothing we can do.”
Wendy Nueman’s 15-year-old daughter, a sophomore at the school, didn’t answer her phone right away after the shooting. When she finally called, it was from a borrowed phone.
“She just said she was OK. She couldn’t hardly speak,” Nueman said, holding back tears. She gathered that her daughter ran from the school.
“It’s super scary,” she said. “We feel like we live in a little bubble here. Obviously, no one is immune.”
Deborah Weingarten, who has three students at the school, said she made the normally 50-minute drive from her job in Denver to Evergreen in about 20 minutes, speeding up into the foothills as she watched ambulances come down.
One of her sons heard loud pops and ran away, she said. Another was stuck in the lockdown at the school. He was on the first bus of students brought to the reunification center.
“We’ve been dying inside just waiting,” she said, fighting back tears.
Tasha Williams, mom to a freshman student, said her daughter called about the shooter, frantic and searching for her friend. Williams told her to stay calm and stay put.
“I always taught them like if you hear anything, get down and pretend you are dead,” Williams said. “I shouldn’t have to do that. But that is the world we live in.”
Parents lined up on a sidewalk outside Bergen Meadow Elementary School, waiting to reunite with their children, exchanging hugs and quiet conversation. Slowly, buses full of students trickled in. When the school sent out an emergency alert phone call, the simultaneous rings echoed up and down the line.
Kelley said in a 5 p.m. news conference that between 20 and 25 students still have not been reunited with their parents.
‘Outraged that this continues to happen’
In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis said he is carefully monitoring the situation at Evergreen High School and Colorado State Patrol troopers are on scene to support local law enforcement.
“Students should be able to attend school safely and without fear across our state and nation. We are all praying for the victims and the entire community,” Polis said.
U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, whose district includes Evergreen, said in a statement she was “shocked and heartbroken” to learn about the shooting.
“I’m hopeful that law enforcement is able to intervene and ensure all of our kids come home safe,” Pettersen said. “We are in communication with local law officials and will be there to support the Evergreen community.”
Law enforcement had cleared the high school as of 3:43 p.m., the sheriff’s office said.
Agents from the Denver division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI’s Denver field office also responded to the shooting, officials said.
The shooting at Evergreen High is at least the seventh school shooting in Colorado since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School that killed 12 students and one teacher.
Before Wednesday, recent school shootings in the state happened at Denver’s East High School in 2023, when a student shot two administrators as they searched him for weapons and killed himself after fleeing the scene; and at Aurora’s Hinkley High School in 2021, when a student shot and injured three other students.
“No student, no educator, no family should ever have to endure the terror and trauma of gun violence in a place of learning,” said Brooke Williams, president of the Jefferson County Education Association, and Kevin Vick, president of the Colorado Education Association, in a joint statement. “As leaders of Colorado’s educators, we are outraged that this continues to happen in our schools. … Families send their children to classrooms trusting they will return home safely each day.”
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