- ThoughtBox wrote:
- I have always been interested in the story of basketball star Greg Barnes. Though I don't know a lot about him, or any backstory, I sort of think that his suicide may have nothing to do with what Eric and Dylan did. It's truly a tragic incident that was completely overshadowed by the aftermath of the massacre itself.
Columbine High School's star basketball player committed suicide Thursday, stunning a community still struggling to heal from last year's massacre.
Greg Barnes, a 17-year-old junior and the Rebels' top scorer, hanged himself in the family's Jefferson County home. His father found him about 12:15 p.m.
Hundreds of neighbors, students and teachers brought baked goods, casseroles and hugs to the boy's parents, Mark and Judy, as they stood sobbing in their doorway.
Varsity basketball coach Rudy Martin met with his players at the Barnes home.
"I didn't know what to tell them," Martin said. "I don't know what to tell my own kids," who are 10 and 13. "For two years their hero has been Greg Barnes."
He said he had no inkling Barnes - described as a role model to younger students and a member of the student council - was suicidal. "He stopped in and talked almost every day." Barnes was "an outstanding player, but a better kid," he said.
Three Columbine athletic teams were forced to compete in playoff games Thursday despite asking for postponements.
"The kids really had a hard time handling it," said Robin Ortiz, coach of the varsity baseball team, which won its game 8-6 against Highlands Ranch.
Ortiz said he last saw Barnes on Wednesday. "He was bouncing down the halls with that great big grin on his face like he always did." Columbine sophomore Jamie Conwell said several students saw Barnes on Thursday after his third-period gym class about 11 a.m. and there was no outward sign of despondency.
"When is all of this going to end?" Conwell asked. "It seems like every time we start to get over things, something else happens. This is all so unbelievable."
Law-enforcement, emergency rescue and school authorities declined to say whether Barnes left a note. Mental health experts said that without knowing why Barnes committed suicide, the public should not assume a link to last year's shootings.
Barnes' is the second high-profile suicide since the April 20, 1999, shootings that left 15 people dead and two dozen others wounded. Carla Hochhalter, the mother of wounded student Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was left partially paralyzed, killed herself Oct. 22.
"We're really praying for his family," said Ann Kechter, whose son, Matt, was killed at Columbine and was good friends with Barnes. "We know how incredibly painful this is going to be for his family and what they're going to have to go through.
"It breaks your heart." Matt Kechter and Greg Barnes often studied together, and Barnes would drive Kechter home from school. Both boys had younger brothers.
A 6-foot-4 guard on the varsity team, Barnes scored 602 points this past season, averaging 26.2 points per game. He carried the Rebels to the quarterfinals.
Barnes was named last month to The Denver Post All-Colorado basketball team as one of the top five players in his school's classification in the state.
He was being wooed by colleges all across the country, coach Martin said.
Vanderbilt University had called Thursday morning and George Washington the day before.
"During tight games he would dive on the floor for the ball like it was an open gym," Martin said.
Before last year's shootings, Barnes had been in a creative writing class with Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. In the class, Harris once wrote in an assignment that he was a shotgun.
"Maybe it was a warning sign," Barnes told The Denver Post two weeks after the shootings. "I didn't think anything about it then."
Bonnie Schweitzberger, an elementary school teacher whose daughter Sara attends Columbine, said students were reeling.
"(Sara) came home and told us what happened and said she didn't want to go back tomorrow,"
Schweitzberger said. "She doesn't think a lot of kids will be going. These Columbine kids have been through a lot."
Tammy Theus' son, Tyrone Garrett, plays on the junior varsity team at Columbine and knew Barnes well.
"I just can't believe it," Theus said. "It's just another setback for the community. What's next?"
In addition to Carla Hochhalter's suicide, the community also suffered a setback in February when two Columbine students were killed in a Subway sandwich shop near the school.
Grief counselors cautioned against linking Barnes' suicide to other events.
"It's important that we recognize these things as separate incidents," said Tom Olbrich with the Jefferson Center for Mental Health. "We may need to stop and think and say, "Well, this could happen at almost any high school any place.' " And at any time, said Connie Michalik, mother of injured student Richard Castaldo.
While many people felt the community's pain would ease after the April 20 anniversary of the shootings, Michalik did not.
"Everyone thought "Oh, let's just get past the first year, and it'll be OK,' " Michalik said. "But I thought that was kind of a false marker. We're still struggling."
...
The only clue as to why Columbine High basketball star Greg Barnes cut short such a promising young life may lie in lyrics found playing over and over in his garage.
Barnes hanged himself there Thursday morning after setting a CD player to continuously play a song with the words, "I'm too depressed to go on."
Barnes had a bright future as a basketball player. As a junior, the shooting guard averaged 26 points a game and was named by The Denver Post to the All-Colorado team. He was a 17-year-old seen by rival coaches as probably the best high school basketball player in Colorado next year.
He was also a teenager who lost a close friend, Matt Kechter, in last year's massacre and witnessed the fatal shooting of Columbine teacher Dave Sanders that day.
Thursday morning, Barnes used an electrical cord to hang himself, according to teammate Dave Mitchell.
"Adam's Song," by the group Blink 182, was playing when Greg's parents found the body, Mitchell told The Associated Press. The lyrics include the phrases, "I never thought I'd die alone" and "I'm too depressed to go on. You'll be sorry when I'm gone."
Mitchell said he had seen no indication that his teammate was despondent.
And it appears Barnes left no note explaining the exact source of his depression.
"I talked to him the night before, and it didn't seem like anything was wrong," he said. "We talked about the usual stuff, girls."
Mental health experts cautioned against linking Barnes' death to the Columbine shootings without knowing why he committed suicide. But they also see the violent death of a close friend as an event that can elevate the risk of suicide, the third most common cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24.
"Certainly the risk is greater among the best friends of kids who've committed suicide," said Dr. David Shaffer, a teen-suicide expert at Columbia University. And among kids whose friends have been killed, "there is a very high likelihood of them developing depression, which can last a long time."
Students and adults who saw Greg Barnes at school this week say they noticed no signs of despondency.
"I can't explain it," said Columbine boys basketball coach Rudy Martin, who spent Thursday night with Greg's parents, Mark and Judy Barnes, at their request. "I'm trying to think of this and that, but there isn't anything."
At the Barnes home, Martin found "three giant notebooks of letters" from colleges seeking to recruit his young basketball star.
Vanderbilt, Iowa, Utah, Notre Dame, Ivy League schools - "some of them were schools I didn't even know he was corresponding with," he said. "Wichita State sent him handwritten notes."
Columbine athletic director Kevin Land was equally mystified.
"We're at a loss as to why this could happen," he said. "Certainly it was nothing we were hearing or a flag going up. . . . I'm kind of speechless."
Barnes' was the second highprofile suicide since the April 20, 1999, shootings that left 15 people dead and about two dozen others wounded. Carla Hochhalter, the mother of wounded student Anne Marie Hochhalter, shot herself to death in a pawnshop last October.
On Friday, hundreds of Columbine students elected to stay home.
"We're estimating that at least 30 percent - a third of the student body - did not attend school today," said Rick Kaufman, a spokesman for Jefferson County schools.
The day passed smoothly, considering the circumstances, but Columbine High was "very quiet and subdued," he said. "Obviously, students and staff are struggling through yet another tremor in the community."
Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone, whose own son hanged himself 12 years ago, said teenagers can hide suicidal thoughts even from their parents.
"I didn't have a clue when it happened," he said of his son.
Stone said he knows too well the grief that Greg Barnes' parents must be enduring. His son Brian was an athlete, a topnotch swimmer at Chatfield High. When he died at age 15, he was listening to a tape similar to the one described by Greg Barnes' teammate, Stone said.
A child's suicide is something "you never get over," Stone said. "You look for answers, and sometimes they're not there."
Greg Barnes' funeral will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday, at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Parish in Littleton.
...
If there was one kid at Columbine High you figured would get past what he'd seen and what he'd felt and what he'd heard, it was Greg Barnes.
He was the star of the basketball team, 6'4" and good-looking, a scrappy guard with shooting range that started just after he got off the bus. He scored more than 26 points a game this past season, his junior year, as he hauled the Rebels places they never should've gone. He was hands-down the best schoolboy player coming back next year in Colorado.
Greg was tougher than trigonometry too. In one playoff game George Washington High tried to bully him, throwing elbows and knocking him down. Barnes kept bouncing up off the floor and sinking his free throws. Columbine won 58-54, with Barnes getting 22 points.
When I interviewed him on April 21, 1999, the day after the shootings, he seemed openhearted and clearheaded. He was a terrific student, especially in math. He wanted to play for North Carolina. As one of his friends said last week, "Greg had plans."
But maybe inside, he was crumbling. Maybe when you're 16 and people--friends, teachers--are slain right in front of you, you find out you're not so scrappy after all. When I was 16, I don't think a single person I was close to had died. At 16, Greg and death got real tight.
Greg was looking out the door of a Columbine science room during fourth period, trying to find what was making those terrible pop! pop! sounds, when he saw girls' basketball coach Dave Sanders running wide-eyed down the hall, right in front of him. "I was standing there with my mouth open, watching," he told me. "The bullets were coming from the left side. I couldn't see him [the shooter]. The bullets must've gone parallel to me and hit Coach Sanders. He got hit [by] two shots in the back. Blood went flying off him, and he fell. There was shrapnel through his jaw."
Greg had the guts to kneel and pull Sanders in from the hallway. He took off his long-sleeved blue shirt, the one he got for Christmas, and it was used to try to stanch the bleeding until help arrived. But nobody came for 3 1/2 hours. Then the SWAT team made Greg and the other students in the science room leave Sanders behind, made them run down the hall and leap over dead classmates and pools of bright-red blood to get out. A half hour later Sanders was dead. That kind of stuff shows up on the back of your eyelids at night.
The next day Greg learned that two of his best friends had been slaughtered. One was sophomore football player Matt Kechter, who lived right down the street from him. They would walk to the bus stop together, study in the library before school. After Greg got his driver's license, he would take Matt home. "He was the most innocent person I ever knew," Greg said. Matt was mowed down in the library like a dog.
The other was his weightlifting partner, Isaiah Shoels. "He was small, but he was really muscular," Greg said. "He could bench 205!" Greg called Isaiah "Grasshopper," because when Isaiah would lift, his eyes would bulge.
This thing nailed Greg from every direction. Even the murderers--Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold--had been in Barnes's writing class. "Man," Greg said. "I'd give all my honors away, give away everything, if this didn't happen."
Over the past year he appeared to have put all the horror behind him. His friends said he didn't brood about the deaths, though he would talk about it if you asked him. He was playing well in off-season basketball leagues, doing well in school, had a great senior year ahead of him.
We were all wrong. Greg may have only been 175 pounds, but he must have been carrying a load of weight. Maybe there are some things you don't bounce back from.
As far as anyone knows, he didn't leave a note or a videotape or an E-mail. He just got up last Thursday, went to his first couple classes, went to third-period gym, waved and smiled at a friend in the hall at about 11 a.m., returned home around noon and hanged himself.
For five years my family lived a mile from Columbine High, and I still don't know what to make of all this. I'm out of silver linings and blame and tears. But I know one thing--I never want to hear about the 13 victims again.
It's fourteen.
...
Columbine High School’s boys basketball coach has resigned after 14 years, saying his heart is no longer in the game since the suicide of one of his star players.
Rudy Martin said Monday there were many reasons for his decision to step down, but that the death of junior guard Greg Barnes this spring weighed the most heavily.
“It opened my eyes to the personal things in my life,” Martin told the Denver Rocky Mountain News. “Time is short. We’ve had one-in-a-million happen twice, and I want to spend more time with my family.”
Barnes, who averaged 26.2 points a game last season and was poised to be one of the best players in the state his senior year, hanged himself at his home May 4.
The suicide came two weeks after the anniversary of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine. Barnes, 17, lost one of his best friends and saw a teacher die in the bloodbath at the Littleton school.
Plans to Stay on Staff
Martin’s life has revolved around basketball. But while coaching Columbine’s summer team, Martin realized how much losing Barnes sapped his enjoyment of the game.
“For our program, we require enthusiasm and hard work. I just didn’t feel in my heart that I could bring those two things to the court. And if I’m not going to practice what I preach, then I should quit,” he said.
He plans to remain on the Columbine teaching staff.
Martin leaves with a career record of 226-79. His teams never had a losing season, and the Rebels won the state championship in 1997.
Barnes’ suicide was one of four deaths that kept the community grieving during the year following the massacre at the school, when two seniors fatally shot 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.
Last October, the mother of a wounded student shot herself to death, and in February, two Columbine sweethearts were found dead after a shooting at a sandwich shop near the school.
Subject: The fourteenth (and fifteenth) victims? 
Thu Jan 14, 2016 3:57 am
