Columbine shooting survivor’s 2025 death classified as homicide, partly attributed to wounds from massacre, coroner says
The mass shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, has now claimed another life, according to a report Wednesday from the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office.
The autopsy released Wednesday in the Colorado county stated that “the manner of death” for Anne Marie Hochhalter — who was found dead
in her apartment in Westminster on Feb. 16 — “is best classified as homicide.”
The report states Hochhalter
died due to the medical condition sepsis, with complications from her paralysis due to the two gunshots she sustained in the Columbine shooting all those years ago being deemed a “significant contributing factor.”
Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Hochhalter was 43 at the time of her death.
Until now, the number of people killed by two teenage gunmen in the shooting in the southern part of the Denver metro area was 12 students and one teacher. The shooters took their own lives.
Hochhalter was shot in her chest and spinal cord and ended up paralyzed. She spent the next quarter century in a wheelchair.
During her adult life Hochhalter became an advocate for victims of mass violence
. She also became close friends with Rick Townsend, whose daughter Lauren was among those who were murdered at Columbine. He told CBS Colorado after Hochhalter’s death that “she was never bitter, or angry because of her injuries” from the school shooting.
