Saying she looks to the future and at what’s positive in her life, a woman paralyzed in the 1999 Columbine, Colorado high school shooting has publicly forgiven the mother of one of the killers.
Anne Marie Hochhalter says it took her years to get over her anger and move beyond the tragic events that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
“I have forgiven you and only wish you the best,” Anne Marie Hochhalter wrote to Sue Klebold in a Facebook post Thursday.
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Hochhalter’s decision to go public comes as Sue Klebold is releasing a book about her son Dylan, who was one of the two shooters. All the profits from the memoir, A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, will go to help people with mental illness.
Hochhalter admitted that mental illness is a common bond between her family and the Klebolds’. Her own mother struggled with it before committing suicide six months after the shooting.
“It means a lot to me that you wouldn’t keep those proceeds for yourself, but to help others that suffer from mental illness,” Hochhalter wrote on her Facebook page.
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After the shootings, Sue and Tom Klebold sent hand-written apologies to the 23 people injured and families of another 13 who lost their lives — baring their hearts and sharing their grief.
Though she’s only read it three times, Hochhalter held on to that note and recently posted a photo of it to her Facebook page.
“Though we have never met, our lives are forever linked through this tragedy that has brought unspeakable heartbreak to our families and our community,” the Klebolds wrote in 1999. “With deepest humility we apologize for the role our son, Dylan, had in causing the suffering you and your family have endured.”
After nearly 16 years, Hochhalter replied in public on Facebook: “I have no ill-will towards you. Just as I wouldn’t want to be judged by the sins of my family members, I hold you in that same regard.”
(WATCH the video from KUSA News below) — Photo: KUSA video
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