suspect in Wednesday\u2019s shooting at Evergreen High School<\/a> whom Owen sat side by side with during their fifth-period jewelry-making class this school year.<\/p>\nDesmond died Wednesday night at St. Anthony Hospital after wounding two other students and shooting himself.<\/p>\n
Owen, a sophomore, said he didn\u2019t get to know Desmond well and didn\u2019t consider him a friend, but he also never pegged Desmond as someone he should eye warily.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just seemed like a normal, everyday kid that was really shy and wouldn\u2019t talk to us that much,\u201d Owen, 15, told The Colorado Sun.<\/p>\n
Owen sat with friends at a table in the cafeteria Wednesday catching up on typical teen to-do\u2019s, including forming a group chat with about 130 students where they could all keep track of their Homecoming plans later this fall. Suddenly, a muffled message came over the intercom. Owen said he didn\u2019t hear the message but within a moment the cafeteria erupted.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single person in the lunch room springs up at once in a panic,\u201d Owen said.<\/p>\n
He scurried out a door with his peers and as they were running, he said he heard the first gunshot 20 or 30 feet from them.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight that instant, I immediately know what\u2019s going on,\u201d Owen said.<\/p>\n
He tripped, fell and scraped his knee while bolting, but got back up and kept running. While many students turned left at one point, Owen and some others made a flash decision to head to the right down a dirt road. One of Owen\u2019s friends lived down the street and he said he hoped to be able to find safety inside.<\/p>\n
Terrified and escaping in a blur, Owen said he caught sight of the shooter, recalling seeing a tall, lanky, skinny male with brownish blonde hair walking out of the school toward him and other kids dashing away right before a shot rang out. He didn\u2019t spot a gun, but he saw the person\u2019s hand raised and pointed directly at them. Owen, who kept running while his longtime friend, Ethan Ramirez, dove into a ditch, said he firmly believes he was looking at the shooter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that moment right before the shooter fired the shot, that\u2019s when I got a glimpse,\u201d Owen said.<\/p>\n
Ethan, also a sophomore, ducked down in the ditch for no more than a few seconds, his arm scratched from the tumble down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just scared if I stayed there he would have came after me,\u201d Ethan, 16, said. So he got back on his feet and continued running, hoping he wouldn\u2019t get shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I was running, I was saying out loud to my friends, \u2018This isn\u2019t real. This can\u2019t be happening,\u2019\u201d Ethan said. \u201cI was in disbelief. I was in shock. I was really scared. I didn\u2019t want to get hurt. I didn\u2019t want to get shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Owen, Ethan and another friend saw a student pop inside the house of a stranger, a man named Mike, who also shepherded them into his home. The three hid in a basement bathroom with another student, locking themselves inside for at least an hour and a half while frantically trying to get ahold of parents, police and other friends.<\/p>\n
The massive group chat created ahead of Homecoming turned into a lifeline for students, lighting up furiously with messages from kids trying to understand what happened and whether they were safe. Later, rumors started to flood the group about who was behind the shooting and their motive.<\/p>\n
Ethan said upon leaving the basement, police escorted his group to the library before they boarded a school bus and headed to Bergen Elementary School to meet their families, clarifying a detail from an earlier account. Later that night, Owen and Ethan attended a service at Flatirons Community Church so that they could reunite with their friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I knew that they were OK, I had to see them,\u201d Owen said. \u201cI had to see everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, when Owen learned the identity of the suspect, he said he immediately knew the boy he laid eyes on in the midst of running away was the person he shared a table with during fifth period, Desmond.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His sense of shock had barely weakened Thursday afternoon. He said a touch of paranoia will likely follow him once he returns to school. But maybe that will fade over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like it didn\u2019t happen,\u201d Owen said. \u201cI can\u2019t believe that this happened to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ethan, who did not know Desmond, is also still trying to grasp the reality of the tragedy he and his friends survived.<\/p>\n
When he returns to school, he said, he wants extra layers of security to reinforce safety for students, including metal detectors along with \u201csome sort of reassurance that it won\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Type of Story: News<\/p>\n
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EVERGREEN \u2014 He was quiet and mostly kept to himself, apart from occasionally asking a classmate for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3832,1757,92101,26584,62756,34179,7206,3,74526,30020,14488,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-151476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-evergreen","11":"tag-evergreen-high-school","12":"tag-high-school","13":"tag-high-school-students","14":"tag-k-12","15":"tag-k-12-education","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-school-shooting","18":"tag-school-shootings","19":"tag-students","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}