Columbine High School Shoting Survivor dies decades after the tragedy. We remember his tenacious mind. – Orange County Register

While the life of Columbine High School shot, Anne Marie Hochhalter, was shaped by the tragedy, the tenacious woman worked hard to ensure that the tragedy did not define it.

Hochhalter was 17 years old when his life went from a teenage clarinet player among the most injured survivors of the 1999 Columbine high school shooting. The Junior Lycée was paralyzed after being killed on the back. She spent the rest of her days in wheelchair with medical complications.

Six months after the shooting, his mother, Carla Hochhalter, entered a lender on wages, asked to see a revolver and died fatally.

In the midst of media, medical care and sorrow, Anne Marie Hochhalter was determined to live life in her own words. She then found her new normal, living independently in a house accessible to the disabled with dogs to love and friends to cherish.

Anne Marie Hochhalter, 43, was found dead at her house on Sunday.

Her death seems to be complications from the medical problems she suffered from the shooting, said Sue Townsend, a mother-in-law of Lauren Townsend, who died during the Columbine shooting. Sue and Rick Townsend contacted Anne Marie Hochhalter after the tragedy and established a family relationship with her, calling her “acquired girl”.

“She was fiercely independent,” said Sue Townsend. “She was a fighter. She would be overthrown – she fought a lot with health problems that flowed from the shooting – but I watched her go up. She was her best defender and defender of others who were not as strong in the community of disabled people. »»

Families, united by tragedy, found joy in understanding the other, attentive nature. They spent a vacation and holidays together and developed a unique and intimate intimate link knitted by injuries that few else could understand.

“She was fun,” said Sue Townsend.

In 2018, they all made a trip to Hawaii and fucked an innertube so that Anne Marie Hochhalter could float in the ocean, her legs hanging in the water.

“She said that the two hours she was there, she had no nervous pain at all,” said Sue Townsend. “The ocean was her happy place even if she couldn’t go there but once.”

Nathan Hochhalter, the brother of Anne Marie Hochhalter, said that her big sister was still a hetero student ‘who liked to learn and read. She had an affinity for the musical instruments, playing the harp, the piano, the clarinet and the guitar.

“And she loved her mother a lot,” said Nathan Hochhalter.

The animals – especially friends on all fours on all fours – have filled a large part of Anne Marie Hochhalter’s heart.

She favored dogs and had several over the years, adapting them.

“She could probably name each dog in the neighborhood, but maybe not the neighbors,” said Sue Townsend, laughing.

Two neighbors, Jan and Dave Anderson, who were part of the village of Anne Marie Hochhalter, take her beloved Chiwewe dog, Georgie.

Although Anne Marie Hochhalter has often suffered, she found an escape in the cinema. Sometimes she and her friends were called, lit a film at the same time and watched it silently by phone, said Sue Townsend.

More than anything, Sue Townsend said that Anne Marie Hochhalter wanted people to know that she was not a victim.

His resilience, said Sue Townsend, was partly led by stubbornness.