It doesn't take an effort to be nice to those even perceived as different, she added, and all students should make such an effort.Stone said April 20th was “Probably the longest day in my entire life,” and, like Holliday, his voice sometimes was filled with emotion.Harris and Klebold were setting off explosives and firing guns - they had four between them - while panicked students and staff were trying to escape and save others at the same time. Rescue efforts by police and fire personnel was conducted under the most dangerous of circumstances amid so many killed and wounded, as well as the emotional shock experienced even by the rescuers who arrived at the scene.Two years prior to the attack a massive training exercise was conducted which proved helpful, Stone added, but “nobody can be prepared for what was happening, explosives going off inside and outside, bombs at the door, being outgunned.”The tragedy at Columbine was a wake-up call, Stone said, and schools across the nation now have had to address that such a tragedy can happen anywhere.
|
Santa Paula Police Chief Bob Gonzales (right) talks to Sheriff John P. Stone prior to his Columbine High School presentation |
Columbine High School:
tragedy told by student, sheriff
November 23, 1999
Santa Paula News
The word that probably best describes that infamous day at Columbine High School has probably not been coined, but harrowing or horrifying will have to do until something to convey the shock, horror and disbelief felt by a high school, town and nation comes along.
Ventura County residents and law enforcement officials heard Tuesday night how the shooting spree of two teenage boys who killed 13 of their high school peers and a teacher before turning the weapons on themselves unfolded from a student who survived the attack and the sheriff of the county that had to face a day he never thought would occur in Littleton, Colorado.Although there were 23 wounded that survived the mass killing by 18-year-old Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, 17, there are countless others whose emotional scars will be carried for a lifetime.The appearance of Jessica Holliday, a Columbine High School senior on that morning of April 20, 1999 when the mass killing occurred, and Jefferson County Sheriff John P. Stone, was arranged by Cops N Jocks, the Santa Paula Police Officers Association-founded organization that matches cops with high school athletes. The Columbine lecture was part of the group's Make the Right Choice Campaign; national Cops N Jocks Executive Director Rich Randolph of the Santa Paula Police Department was on hand for the lecture as well as a elected officials.Holliday and Stone appeared Tuesday at Moorpark High School before about 400 people; Wednesday night they appeared in Oxnard.Holliday was in the library when the attack occurred, and witnessed the death of her best friend. While the horror mounted at the high school 911 emergency calls started to pour in, and Stone played the tape of those frantically reporting the unbelievable.Holliday confirmed that Harris and Klebold were outcasts and favored targets of verbal attacks from other students, especially athletes according to media reports. She knew them both and said if they had thought they had friends, or at least if people were nice to them, the tragedy might have been averted.
