Thurston High Students Visit Shooting Scene

Hundreds of students walked in the rain past a fence packed with flowers Monday, down a hallway once flecked with blood and into a cafeteria still fresh with memories of a shooting rampage that left two classmates dead.

Though the blood had been scrubbed away, the bullet holes spackled and painted over, students could not hide their grief or their pain.

“It felt like sheer terror, like you were going through it again, like the shooting had started again,” said 15-year-old Stacy Compton, who was in the cafeteria during the shootings Thursday. “It was the same way I felt when it first started.”

For three hours, Thurston High School was open so the 1,400 students could look around and talk to counselors before returning to class today.

As small groups filed in, accompanied by parents and teachers, a bagpiper played “Amazing Grace.” Inside, they went back to the seats where they had been at the time of the shooting and scribbled their feelings on a long sheet of paper.

“It looked like it was haunted in there. It was dead silent,” said 18-year-old Brandon Mainard.

Principal Larry Bentz said that when he first went in, “I sat in a corner and probably cried for 45 minutes.”

Memorial Day was a somber time for this city of 51,000, a day to begin taking their lives back and burying the first of the dead--16-year-old Ben Walker, who was shot in the head.

Meanwhile, Jake Ryker, 17, was released from Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, denying he was a hero for tackling a gunman in his high school cafeteria after being shot through the chest and watching his girlfriend take a bullet.

Doctors said the 6-foot-4 wrestler recovered quickly from gunshot wounds to his lung and a finger.

Later, in an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Ryker said he didn’t think about his own safety when he lunged at the gunman to end the shooting spree.

The suspect, 15-year-old Kipland P. Kinkel, was on a suicide watch Monday at a juvenile detention center.