For Columbine Survivors, A Nightmare Revisited

Sept. 28, 2006 — -- Forty miles away and seven years earlier, Crystal Miller stood where the six hostages in the Platte Canyon High School shooting stood on Wednesday. Like Emily Keyes, who died yesterday from a gunshot wound, Miller was sixteen-years-old when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into her school and shot to death 12 of her fellow classmates and one teacher at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado.

"I remember so well the emotion that's involved, the questions, the fear and the guilt and the anger; just that roller coaster of emotions that you go through and living in that paradoxical state of being thankful that you are alive, but wishing you were dead because the pain is so overwhelming," said Miller.

The pain Miller describes is not physical; she was not injured in the Columbine shooting. Her pain comes from her vivid memories of April 20, 1999. She was studying for a physics tests and hid under a table when the shooting began.

"I was there in the middle of the library for seven and a half minutes. Of course it felt like an eternity. For these seven and a half minutes I imagined so many different things. What would it feel like to get shot? I had my life flashing before my eyes, and at the end of the seven and a half minutes the boys ran out of ammunition as they stood above our table," remembered Miller.

Now 24-years-old, Miller is speaking to high school students around the country with the 180 Tour, using her experience at Columbine to teach young people that the decisions they make can have eternal consequences.

Miller was leaving a school assembly on Wednesday when she heard about the shooting in Bailey. "It takes you back and you remember things. I've done a tremendous amount of healing over the last seven and half years, but of course there's always raw emotion there when you hear something like this," said Miller. "It hurts so bad to hear that something like this is going on, but especially back in Denver, not far from Columbine, to recognize that once again our community is struggling and has so many questions, but no answers to those questions."