Tragedy at Platte Canyon High School
On September 27, 2006, 16-year old Emily Keyes drove to school as usual, with her mother, Ellen, and her twin brother, Casey, in the car. The sun was rising over distant mountain ranges, and they listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, loud, as she navigated from their home on a mountaintop in Bailey, down the twists and turns of a dirt road lined with picturesque aspen groves. At the highway, she turned and followed the winding path of the wide, rushing South Platte River. At 7:17 a.m., Emily and Casey got out of the car at Platte Canyon High School, and Ellen drove to work.
Between 8:42 and 11:40 a.m., a dilapidated yellow jeep, later discovered to be the living quarters of a 53-year-old homeless man by the name of Duane Morrison, came and went from several different spaces in the high school parking lot.
At 11:40 a.m., Duane Morrison calmly entered the school building, claiming he had a bomb. He was wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt and a camouflage backpack. Inside were a semi-automatic pistol and a handgun. Morrison headed upstairs to room 206, where Sandra Smith was teaching honors English. He instructed her to leave, and when she would not, he fired his gun into the air. He then told the students to line up facing the chalkboard and made everyone leave, except for seven girls. Emily Keyes was one of them.
After the gunman had taken his hostages, a code-white alert - meaning a lockdown - was announced over the p.a. system, and students were instructed to stay in their classrooms. Park County Sheriff Fred Wagener, whose son, Ben, attends the high school and once had a crush on Emily Keyes, began negotiating with the gunman. Morrison wouldn’t talk to Wagener directly – he used the girls to relay his messages. The only clear demands he made were for the police to back off.
Morrison sexually assaulted all of the girls before releasing four of his hostages and keeping two. Fifteen-year-old Lynna Long, one of the released hostages, later said that even though they were all lined up facing the chalkboard, she knew the other girls were being molested because she could hear “the rustling of clothes and elastic being snapped and zippers being opened and closed.”
Emily Keyes' Last Text Message
After the four girls were released, Emily, who was still a hostage, managed to respond to her father’s text message, which asked, “R U OK?”
She wrote back, “I love you guys.”
By 12:10 p.m., all 800 students, except the two remaining hostages, had been evacuated. A four-mile stretch of Highway 285 on both sides of the school was closed. Ambulances were parked in the end zone of the football field.
All the parents standing outside the school were urged by authorities to go back to the sheriff substation. At least 20 parents shook their heads at once and said, “No.”
At 3:20 p.m., the gunman told police that something “big” would happen at 4:00, and that it would “be over then.” At 3:30, Sheriff Wagener made a decision, and soon after, the Jefferson County SWAT team stormed the classroom. Morrison used the two girls as human shields, and then, when she tried to run, he shot Emily Keyes in the back of the head before killing himself.
Everyone grieved when news trickled out that a student had been shot, and when, moments later, Emily was carried on a pram from the classroom to the Flight-for-Life helicopter.
Emily’s father, John-Michael, who had been waiting there all day, hoping to see his daughter, shouted out, “Is there anything I can do to make her more comfortable?”
Someone replied, “No.”
The helicopter took only a few minutes to arrive at the hospital in Denver, where Emily was pronounced dead at 4:32 p.m.
Annual Motorcycle Ride Commemorates her Death
On October 7, 2006, close to 6,000 motorcyclists rode the 40 miles from Columbine High School to Platte Canyon High School in a show of compassion for the victims of the shootings at both schools. After a moment of silence and a balloon release, they rode off beneath an archway of pink balloons. Sheriff Fred Wagener was among them. The riders each donated at least $25.00, and proceeds went to the I love you guys Foundation, established in memory of Emily Keyes. The procession was so long, even with the riders side by side, that the first to get to Platte Canyon arrived as the final motorcyclists left Columbine. The tradition has continued every year since.
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