Anne Marie Hochhalter, who spoke publicly about the long-lasting effects of gun violence after she was paralyzed in the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, was found dead on Sunday at her home in Westminster, Colo. She was 43.
The police said that officers had found Ms. Hochhalter after they were called for a welfare check. The Adams County coroner, which initially handled Ms. Hochhalter’s case, said it had been transferred to the Jefferson County coroner, “given that her death was likely related to complications of paraplegia associated with the Columbine shooting.” The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office said that autopsy results were not yet available.
Sue Townsend, who became close to Ms. Hochhalter after her stepdaughter, Lauren Townsend, was killed in the shooting, said that Ms. Hochhalter had been dealing with lingering effects from her injuries, including a pressure sore and an infection.
Ms. Hochhalter was eating lunch with friends when two students opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999, killing 12 other students and a teacher before fatally shooting themselves.
Ms. Hochhalter, a junior who was 17, was shot twice — once in the chest and once in the back — and was paralyzed from the waist down. Her brother, Nathan Hochhalter, who was a freshman at Columbine, was trapped in the school for hours until a SWAT team arrived.
Six months after the shooting, their mother, Carla June Hochhalter, walked into a pawnshop, asked to see a gun, loaded it and killed herself. The elder Ms. Hochhalter, 48, had been struggling with depression and other mental health issues before the Columbine shooting, her daughter later said.
But her death was “very much harder than what happened at Columbine,” Ms. Hochhalter told U.S. News & World Report in 2009. “It shocked me because, you know, I was injured by a gun and the fact that, you know, she committed suicide with one was very hard to understand.”
As Ms. Hochhalter dealt with loss of her mother, she leaned on her faith to help her rebuild her life, emotionally and physically, she said. She became “fiercely independent” and learned to maneuver in a wheelchair, to drive and to live by herself, Ms. Townsend said.
“She told me, ‘I can do anything you can do, it just takes me longer,’” said Ms. Townsend, who said she and her husband, Rick, had considered Ms. Hochhalter “our acquired daughter.”
After initially offering to help the family with Ms. Hochhalter’s medical appointments, the Townsends formed a lifelong bond with her, spending holidays with her and taking her to Hawaii on a vacation, where she went into the ocean for the first time.
“She never thought of herself as a victim,” Rick Townsend said. “She identified as a survivor.”
In 2016, when Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the Columbine shooters, released a memoir, “A Mother’s Reckoning,” Ms. Hochhalter wrote a note addressed to Ms. Klebold on Facebook, saying she felt no ill will toward her.
“Just as I wouldn’t want to be judged by the sins of my family members, I hold you in that same regard,” Ms. Hochhalter wrote. “It’s been a rough road for me, with many medical issues because of my spinal cord injury and intense nerve pain, but I choose not to be bitter towards you. A good friend once told me, ‘Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die.’ It only harms yourself. I have forgiven you and only wish you the best.”
Ms. Hochhalter worked for a time at Bath & Body Works and counseled other people with disabilities, Ms. Townsend said. She also supported other victims of gun violence. In 2012, she attended a vigil after a gunman killed 12 people inside an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. Her message to survivors: “It does get better. But it never goes away,” she told The Associated Press.
As she dealt with chronic pain, she was often reminded of the lingering effects of the Columbine shooting. Once, when checking out at a grocery store, a cashier asked her bluntly why she was in a wheelchair.
Ms. Hochhalter responded just as bluntly that she had been one of the students injured in the Columbine shooting. Then a man behind her in line said he had been part of a SWAT team that was not allowed to enter the school until hours after the shooting. He told her he was sorry he had not been able to get to her sooner.
“And I was able to tell him, ‘It’s OK,’” she told U.S. News & World Report in 2009. “‘No one blames you; I don’t blame you.’ It was one of the greatest moments of my life.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
