Columbine Survivor, paralyzed after shooting, dies 25 years after the tragedy – National

Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was partially paralyzed in Puccine in Columbine High School But he found the strength to forgive and heal her soul after binding to another family relaxed tragedy, she died. She was 43 years old.

Hochhalter was found at her home in the suburban Denver on Sunday. Her family suspects that she died of natural causes that emerged from a 1999 shooting injury in which 12 students and teachers were killed.

The investigation into how she died was moved to an office that was carried out by the autopsy of those killed in Columbine, the coroner’s office told Adams and Broomfield County.

In 2016, Hochhalter wrote a letter to one of the mothers of weapons, saying, “Bitterness is like swallowing a poison tablet” and offering her forgiveness. Attending the vigil to the 25th anniversary of the tragedy last year – after skipping a similar event five years earlier – she said she was overwhelmed by her childhood happy memories and wanted them to remember how they live, not how they died.

Hochhalter has struggled with intense pain from his wounds from firearms in the last 25 years. Still, her brother said she was tireless in her ride to help others – from people with disabilities to saving dogs and members of her family.

“She was useful to a large number of people. She was a really good human being and a sister,” her brother Nathan Hochhalter said on Tuesday.

Her own tragedy was stacked six months after the shooting, when her mother Carla Hochhalter entered the coach and asked her to look at the gun before she used it on herself.

In the midst of her mother’s death, Anne Marie Hochhalter embraced another family who lost her daughter in Columbine.

Sue Townsend, whose stepfather, Lauren Townsend, was killed, she reached to help Hochhalter as a means of relieving her own pain. Initially, Townsend took Hochhalter to medical appointments and physical therapy, but their relationship soon deepened as they got lunch and went shopping together and eventually started sharing family dinners and rest.

Townsend and her husband Rick called Hochhalter their “acquired daughter.”

On a trip to Hawaius together, Hochhalter, who used a wheelchair, managed to float in lagoon without pain, she said.

“That connection would never have happened if it wasn’t for Columbine. So I tried to focus on the gift that Columbine gave us to Anne Marie, instead of what he took away,” Townsend said.

In 2016, the mother of one of the armaments Columbine, Sue Klebold, posted a memoir that explored the causes of the violence of her son and how to prevent future attacks through consciousness of mental health. Hochhalter said she was grateful at the time that Klebold donated a book to help those with mental illness. Hochhalter said her mother had suffered from depression and did not believe that the shootings were directly guilty of her death.

She said she was sure Klebold agonized what she could do as differently as she thought in ways she could prevent the death of the mother she loved.

“Once a good friend said to me,” The bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expectation that the other person will die. “It just hurts myself. I forgave you and I just wish you the best,” Hochhalter said in a message she posted on Facebook. She also included a photo of the card that Sue and Tom Klebold sent her while she was recovering at the hospital after the shooting.

Hochhalter attended a vigil of the 25th anniversary with his brother in April, who was trapped in the classroom during the shooting. She did not attend the 20th anniversary due to post-traumatic stress disorder, she said in a post on social media last year.

“I could really cure my soul from that awful day in 1999,” she wrote.

& copy 2025. Canadian printing