Anne Marie Hochhalter was a survivor of the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, who later spoke out about the impact of gun violence.
- Died: February 2025
- Details of death: Died at her home in Westminster, Colorado at the age of 43.
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Anne Marie Hochhalter’s legacy
Hochhalter was just 17 years old on the day that changed her life and profoundly impacted American society. The 1999 Columbine High School shooting wasn’t the first of its kind, but it was unprecedentedly deadly, and its horrific facts consumed the media and people all over America for weeks. While the 12 students and one teacher who were killed received much of the focus, there were also 21 people injured that fateful day. Hochhalter was one of them, shot in the spine and the chest while she ate lunch outdoors.
Gravely injured, Hochhalter underwent intensive medical procedures, performed by doctors who didn’t expect her to survive. She pulled through, paralyzed from the waist down, and learned to use a wheelchair. Her recovery was rocked by her mother’s death by suicide, six months after the mass shooting. But Hochhalter continued to heal, and she was ultimately able to live on her own and work in retail and as a counselor for people with disabilities.
Hochhalter advocated for the disabled as well, speaking out in favor of supplemental Social Security assistance. She also spoke out about the media’s treatment of mass shootings, spreading her belief that killers’ names should not be publicized after such incidents. She was frustrated with the adulation that the Columbine killers received from some troubled followers in the years afterward. However, she publicly offered grace to the parents of those killers, sharing an open letter to Sue Klebold in 2016 in which she forgave her for her son’s actions.
Notable quote
“I still feel sadness at the loss of the 13 people who died that day, but I felt their presence at the vigil. When the song ‘Over the Rainbow’ started playing, I looked at the empty chairs and suddenly felt all of them sitting there, with smiles on their faces, wanting us to remember the good times. The happy memories. They would want us to remember and laugh at their silly goofy antics when they were alive, instead of focusing on how their lives sadly ended. Those 13 are always with us. They’re never forgotten. We are Columbine.” — from a 2024 Facebook post about a 25th anniversary vigil for the victims of the shooting
Tributes to Anne Marie Hochhalter
Full obituary: The New York Times
