Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was partially paralyzed in the shooting at Columbine high school, but found strength to forgive and heal her soul after joining another family devastated by the tragedy, has died. She was 43 years old.
Hochhalter was found at home at the Denver suburbs on Sunday. His family suspects that he died of natural causes derived from his wounds in the 1999 shooting in which 12 students and a teacher killed.
The research on how he died has been transferred to the office that carried out the autopsies of those killed in Columbine, said the Forensic Office for the County of Adams and Broomfield.
Hochhalter in 2016 wrote a letter to one of the mothers of the gunmen who said: “Bitterness is like swallowing a poisonous pill” and offering its forgiveness. Attending a vigil on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy last year, after skipping a similar event five years before, said she was flooded with happy memories of her childhood and wanted the murdered to remember how they lived, not how they died.
Hochhalter fought with intense pain for his gunshot wounds in the last 25 years. However, his brother said he was tireless on his way to help others, from people with disabilities to rescue dogs and family members.
“She was useful for many people. She was really a good human being and a sister, ”said his brother, Nathan Hochhalter on Tuesday.
His own tragedy worsened six months after the shooting, when his mother, Carla Hochhalter, entered a pawn house and asked to look at a gun before using it in itself.
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Following his mother's death, Anne Marie Hochhalter was hugged by another family who lost a daughter in Columbine.
Sue Towsend, whose stepdaughter, Lauren Towsend, was killed, contacted to help Hochhalter as a means to relieve her own pain. At first, Towsend took Hochhalter to medical appointments and physiotherapy, but his link soon deepened when they had lunch and shopping together and finally began to share family dinners and vacations.
Towsend and her husband, Rick, called Hochhalter his “acquired daughter.”
On a trip together to Hawaii, Hochhalter, who used a wheelchair, could float in a painless lagoon, he said.
“This relationship would never have happened if it had not been for Columbine. So I tried to concentrate on the gift Columbine gave us in Anne Marie instead of what she took, ”Towsend said.
In 2016, the mother of one of Columbine's gunmen, Sue Klebold, launched a memory exploring the causes of violence and ways of preventing future attacks through the consciousness of mental health. Hochhalter said at that time that she was grateful that Klebold was donating the book to help people with mental illnesses. Hochhalter said his mother suffered from depression and did not believe that the shootings were blamed directly from his death.
She said she was sure that Klebold had agonized because she could have done differently as she had thought of ways that she could have avoided the death of the mother she loved.
“A good friend once told me:” Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die. ” On Facebook.
Hochhalter attended the 25th anniversary vigil in April with his brother, who was caught in a classroom during the shooting. He had not attended the twentieth anniversary event due to posttraumatic stress disorder, he said in a publication on social networks last year.
“I have really been able to cure my soul since that horrible day in 1999,” he wrote.