For friends, long wait is painfully tense

By Carla Crowder
Scripps Howard News Service

Cassie Bernall

One of Cassie Bernall's friends spoke of her in present tense Wednesday. Another spoke of her in past tense.

Such was the waiting game outside Columbine High School as friends and families of missing students refused to give up hope that someone might have survived the carnage.

"Cassie is a light for Christ, a great girl," said Craig Moon, 17, wandering through Clement Park near the site of the massacre.

"Cassie was a ray of sunlight," Justin Boggus said moments later. "She was the kind of girl who was always happy, no matter what. She loved everybody. She loved God. She loved the world,"

Bernall, a junior at Columbine High School, still was missing Wednesday. Boggus feared that she was dead, but authorities still had not confirmed the names of those who were slain.

Boggus and Moon are active in the youth group at West Bowles Community Church. That is where they got to know Bernall.

They said she often studied in the school library -- it was the site of the worst violence -- during her lunch hour.

"She was a good writer. She loved poetry," Boggus said.

During tense hours Tuesday afternoon, the youth group kept a running computer list of its members as they safely escaped from the school.

"The last two kids unaccounted for were me and Cassie, because I was holed up," Moon said. "I got out, and it looks like she didn't."

Soon after Moon escaped, he met up with Bernall's mother outside nearby Leawood Elementary School, where hundreds of parents were being united with traumatized teens.

"Her mom came up to me every two minutes and asked if I'd seen Cassie. I told her, 'I'm sure there are a lot of people unaccounted for,"' Moon said.

But that mother's daughter never showed up Tuesday.

"I'm good friends with her brother, and I saw him last night and I just bawled my eyes out," said Boggus, a student at Bear Creek High School.

Moon, like a lot of other grieving students, relies on his faith in God to support him.

When the shooting started, "The first thing I did, I ran to a girl and I just started praying. They can take my life, but they can't take my God away."