Listening by surveillance as the hostage situation unfolded, Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener heard a plaintive request that helped cement his decision for a SWAT team to storm the room minutes later.
"Why won't you come get me?" called one of the two girls still being held at gunpoint. Wegener could not identify her voice, but the message, delivered shortly after 3 p.m., galvanized him, he said.
"The hostages know we are there because we are talking," he recalled in an interview Friday with 9News, noting his frustration of being separated from the girls by a 3-inch solid core door and a man with a gun. "It's frustrating that you are that far away, or that close, and you can't get there."
In his first in-depth interview since Wednesday's hostage crisis at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Wegener talked about his horror, anger and then heartbreak of the tragedy that saw six girls held captive, four of them released and one of them killed by the gunman, later identified as 53-year-old Duane Morrison of Denver.
The gunman had warned police that "something will happen" at 4 p.m.
Shortly after 3:30, with negotiations at a standstill, SWAT team members stormed the classroom where Morrison held the last two girls. An officer managed to shield one of the girls before Morrison reacted, Wegener said.
Then Morrison fired a single shot at a SWAT member before shooting 16-year-old Emily Keyes as she tried to run. Morrison then fired a round into his own head as officers fired, striking him several times. He died at the scene, and Keyes was flown to St. Anthony Central Hospital in Denver, where she was pronounced dead.
"This wasn't supposed to end like this," Wegener said during the interview. "I was upset ... that it happened; that later turned into anger that an individual such as this entered a sanctuary of a school to commit horrible acts on young ladies."
Having spent most of his 44 years in Bailey, Wegener said he views its residents as family. He said the community, including Emily's parents, have shown him unwavering support.
He visited with the girl's parents Thursday to deliver a message: "I did everything I could to help their child."
His own son was a childhood sweetheart to their daughter, Wegener noted. "Just a very nice little girl," he said of Emily, before being overcome by emotion. "They were just kids."
Now, Wegener said, he struggles with the aftermath of his own grief.
He said he's sorry that Emily could not be saved, sorry for the five young women who witnessed such horror and sorry for the demons that drove Morrison to cause all that pain.
"And you know," the sheriff added, "I would have liked to have met him. ... I would have liked to have my shot."
