DENVER (AP) — The death of a woman who was partially paralyzed in the Columbine High School shooting has been ruled a homicide, raising the death toll of the 1999 attack to 14.
Anne Marie Hochhalter died Feb. 16 of sepsis — a reaction to infection — and complications from her paralysis were a “significant contributing factor” in her death, the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office said in an autopsy report obtained Thursday. She was 43.
At the time, her family and friends suspected her death was due to natural causes related to her injuries in the shooting, which immediately led to the deaths of 12 students and one teacher. The two student gunmen killed themselves. Due to the role her paralysis was suspected of playing in her death, the investigation was transferred to the office that also reviewed the deaths in the school shooting.
Hochhalter’s brother, Nathan Hochhalter, said a pressure sore, a common problem for people living with paralysis, led to sepsis. He said he knew that his sister’s life would likely be shorter because of her paralysis but her death this early was unexpected.
“We didn’t think it would be this bad this soon,” he said.
Hochhalter struggled with intense pain from her gunshot wounds in the years following the shooting, but fought hard to to overcome the complications of her injuries and remain positive, family and friends said. She was tireless in her drive to help others, including people with disabilities and members of her family, and she loved dogs, they said.
Hochhalter chose to forgive the mother of one of the gunmen, writing in a 2016 letter to Sue Klebold: “’A good friend once told me, ‘Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die.’ It only harms yourself. I have forgiven you and only wish you the best.”
Hochhalter’s own tragedy was compounded six months after the shooting, when her mother, Carla Hochhalter, died by suicide. Anne Marie Hochhalter said her mother suffered from depression and did not believe the shootings were directly to blame for her mother’s death.
After her mother’s passing, she became the “acquired daughter” of another family that lost a child in the Columbine shooting, Lauren Townsend. Townsend’s stepmother, Sue Townsend, reached out to help Hochhalter as a way to cope with her own grief, but eventually Hochhalter was coming over for family dinners and joining them on vacations.
“She brought a light to our lives that will shine for a long time,” Townsend said.
Hochhalter attended a vigil marking the 25th anniversary of the shooting last year, after skipping a similar event five years earlier because of post-traumatic stress disorder, she said in a social media post.
This time she said she was flooded with happy memories from her childhood and said she wanted those killed remembered for how they lived, not how they died.
“I’ve truly been able to heal my soul since that awful day in 1999,” she wrote.
