Within the span of five minutes, Kip Kinkel had fatally wounded two students and injured two dozen more. When Patrolman Boring arrived at the school, two other officers – Donny Myers and Dan Bishop – were already trying to help victims and look for any other shooters. Another classmate, 17-year-old Mikael Nickolauson was shot in the head point blank, and died on the scene.Ĭredit AP Investigators outside Thurston High School after the shooting, May 21, 1998. And immediately heard one of my other football players saying, ‘Hey Coach, I need your help!” He was trying to do CPR on a young man by the name of Ben Walker.”ġ6-year-old Ben Walker would die within 24 hours. “I could see he had taken a wound to the face. Stone raced over to the back door, and opened it slowly. I grabbed his hand and slapped it down on his leg and said, “Keep pressure on that.” He came into the cafeteria and found one of his players, shot in the leg. He’d been across the hall, cleaning up after the senior breakfast when he heard the gunfire. One person pushing against the tide was Don Stone. I heard books hitting the floor, I heard screams, I heard hysteria, I heard people running for the exits.” “I watched the six or seven kids tackle and dogpile on top of Kip. “I watched as my friends got shot,” says Lynn. He is still clad in his trench coat and is spattered with blood.īy this point, Betina Lynn was struggling to hide under a table, as Kinkel advanced on the panicked mass of students. And not growing up around guns, I had no idea what the noise was.”Īnother junior, Betina Lynn, figured some of the student campaigners had actually brought fireworks into the building.Ĭredit Springfield Police Department Kip Kinkel, after being taken into custody. “But it.it switched when we heard the popping. “So there was a lot of activity going on anyway,” says Leu. There were kids outside campaigning for student elections, and a senior honor breakfast across the hall. She recalls hanging out with friends in the cafeteria that morning. And “school shooter” had yet to become a familiar term. At least three people dead and twenty-four injured, after shootings today in Springfield…” (FADE UNDER, HOLD)Ģ0 years ago, most phones were still landlines. Montage01: “KLCC’s Northwest Passage, I’m Tripp Sommer. Kinkel came back the next morning, heavily armed. Stone says he was certain that’d be the last he’d see of Kinkel. I’m not sure you’re going to be with us anymore.”Ī photo of Kip Kinkel, who would go on to kill his parents and two classmates in May 1998. “But nonetheless, he said, “Coach, what’s going to happen?” And I said, “Well Kip, we don’t have any tolerance for guns on campus. “I can remember him looking up at me, his eyes were…I just couldn’t see anything in his eyes,” says Stone. He recalls Kinkel’s response, before being led away by police. Was he a ticking time bomb? Possibly, it’s just so hard to say.”ĭon Stone was Thurston High’s Vice Principal and football coach at the time. “Maybe there’d be another trigger, but I honestly believe had he not been caught with a gun that day, that we would not have had May 21 st. 32 caliber gun was found, which he’d bought from another classmate. The day before, Springfield Police came to campus after a tip led to a search of Kip’s locker. McCown wrestles though, with not foreseeing the violence that came to his school May 21 st, 1998. “Still to this day, you can pick out 150 students on this campus that look like, talk like, act like, and present themselves like he did,” says McCown. He says the fifteen-year-old struggled with mental health issues, and had run-ins with authority, but didn’t stand out from any other kids at school. McCown was gunman Kip Kinkel’s best friend. “I’ve probably been out here for a half dozen times or so for different events, and maybe a half dozen other times for just my own thoughts and memories.” KLCC Thurston High alum Tony McCown, who was one of Kip Kinkel's best friends, visits the Thurston Memorial in Springfield.
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