Friends left each other in library

By Steve Caulk
Scripps Howard News Service

Corey Depooter

The last time Landon Jones Jr. saw Corey DePooter was Tuesday at the Columbine High School library, where DePooter had his head buried in research material.

DePooter looked up as Jones left for lunch and told Jones, "See ya later."

He never did.

Twenty minutes later, the school was under attack and the library was the site of a massacre.

As of Wednesday afternoon, DePooter, 17, was missing and some family and friends had lost hope that he might miraculously show up.

"We know he's dead," said his father, Neal. "We know. We knew at 4 o'clock yesterday."

DePooter's sister, 15-year-old Jenna, escaped from the school unharmed. The family spent most of Wednesday huddled in their split-level home less than a mile from the school, waiting for word.

Quietly, slowly, Neal DePooter described his son as an all-American boy. He stood on the front step, staring into the distance, telling the anguish of a mistaken report the previous evening that his son might be alive. A reporter called and said Corey's name was on a hospital list.

"But he's not in any hospital," he said. "We checked."

A neighbor, who asked to not be named, clung to a rumor that authorities discovered a survivor. She remembered holding the infant Corey 17 years ago, when he arrived home from the hospital, and she remembered a conversation with him last month when he told her he wanted to join the Marines. He liked to fish and camp, she said, and he never caused problems in the neighborhood.

"He would be home alone on weekends with his parents gone, and there were never any parties," she said. "He's a good kid, a wonderful kid."

Classmates described DePooter the same way, saying he put his schoolwork above all else. But he had numerous outside interests, they said, including in-line skating, golf and wrestling. He quit the wrestling team after his sophomore year to focus on his academics, said Bill Greaber, a junior. Landon Jones described him as a "stunt" Rollerblader. Tim Mullan, a junior, golfed with DePooter and said he flirted with par. Walking the fairways, they talked about girls and school.

"I don't think he liked all the classes," Mullan said. "But he liked the atmosphere."

At home on the golf course, DePooter worked with Landon on the Raccoon Creek maintenance crew, running the mower and raking bunkers.

"He's quiet," Jones said. "He would go out of his way to be nice."

Jones remembered conversations at the golf course in which they complained about the work. Then he corrected himself.

"Well, he didn't complain," Jones said. "He just laughed at the things I complained about."

DePooter fit in easily with various groups of students, his classmates said. Greaber remembered him as the first person to befriend him when he arrived from Arizona two years ago.

"He was the friendliest one," Greaber said.