Colorado Girl Dies after School Hostage Standoff

At about 11:40 Wednesday morning, a man walked into Platte Canyon High School in the small town of Bailey, CO, wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt and a camouflage backpack, and carrying a gun. The man announced that he had a bomb in his backpack, and then fired several shots. The gunman took six students hostage initially, cornering the girls in a second-floor classroom.

Tom Grigg, whose 16-year old son Cassidy was in a classroom when the man walked in, said his son told him the man fired his gun and told some students to leave. The students he told to stay behind were all girls. "He stood them up at the blackboard," Grigg said. "He hand-picked the ones he wanted to get out." When Cassidy told the gunman that he wanted to stay with the girls, Grigg said, "The guy flipped him around and put the gun in his face and said, ‘It would be in your best interest to leave.’"

About 2:00, students from the school complex walked to a closed portion of U.S. Highway 285, about a mile west of the school, where they were boarded onto buses and driven to Deer Creek Elementary School, where many worried parents had gathered. About an hour later, an explosion was heard inside the high school and witnesses outside heard yelling.

Authorities had tried to negotiate with the gunman throughout the day, but said they had no idea who the man was, what he wanted, or what his motivation was for taking students hostage. Deputies established verbal contact with him through the door of the classroom at first, but later the gunman spoke only through the hostages, authorities said.

During the course of the afternoon four of the hostages were released, one by one, with the gunman negotiating with authorities through them by telling the students he released to tell deputies of his demands. Authorities said most of his demands were simply that he wanted them to back off.

Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said that after the man cut off negotiations and set a deadline, authorities decided to enter the school. The gunman said that "something will happen" at 4 p.m., but he did not say what the deadline referred to. The tactical SWAT team used explosives as they entered the classroom, only to have the suspect fire at officers, shoot one of the girls in the head and then himself. Emily Keyes, a 16-year-old junior, was airlifted to a local hospital in critical condition, where she later died.

Sheriff Wegener broke into tears as he told reporters, "I’m still somewhat shocked that this could happen in a rural county. I don’t know why the gunman would do what he did." Wegener said that he has worked as a sheriff in the county for 36 years, and he knows the family of the victim.

Jefferson County authorities are sadly familiar with school attacks. Wegener’s office was responsible for handling the 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in which two students killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves.