Anne Marie Hochhalter, who barely survived the Columbine school shooting and was paralyzed from the waist down, died Sunday, nearly 26 years after the attack.
Hochhalter was 43 years old, the Denver Post reported. Her friend Sue Townsend told the paper she was suffering from medical complications caused by the massacre.
In the years following the shooting, Hochhalter became an outspoken advocate against gun violence.
“She was a fighter. She’d get knocked down — she struggled a lot with health issues that stemmed from the shooting — but I’d watch her pull herself back up,” Townsend told the Denver Post. “She was her best advocate and an advocate for others who weren’t as strong in the disability community.”
Hochhalter was a junior sitting in the lunchroom at Columbine High on April 20, 1999, when killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris burst in, unleashed a hail of bullets and set off homemade bombs. She was shot in the back and chest, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.
Doctors performed surgery for four hours to save Hochhalter’s life. They later told her she was very close to becoming the 14th victim of the attack, which left 12 students and one teacher dead.
Six months after the shooting, Hochholter’s mother, who was battling bipolar disorder, died by suicide. Townsend, who lost her stepdaughter Lauren in the shooting, would later call Hochholter her “acquired daughter.”
When Klebold’s mother wrote a book in 2016, Hochhalter penned a public letter stating she held no ill will toward her.
“Just as I wouldn’t want to be judged by the sins of my family members, I hold you in that same regard,” Hochhalter wrote. “It’s been a rough road for me, with many medical issues because of my spinal cord injury and intense nerve pain, but I choose not to be bitter towards you.”
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