From: MICHAEL SPITZER 
Subject: IUFO: OT: Littleton High School Girl did not forsake God (fwd)
Date: 30 Apr 1999 00:29:37 -0400
To: starfriends@esosoft.com, iufo@world.std.com


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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 23:44:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: CompuMa@AOL.COM
Subject: OT: Girl did not forsake God

I remember someone posting a comment the other day about the media ignoring 
this aspect of the shootings.  This isn't mainstream media, but it's 
heartwarming to read.
----------------------------------------------------------

Girl did not forsake God 

Teen-ager who suffered nine gunshot wounds is recovering through
'divine intervention'

By Rebecca Jones
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
http://insidedenver.com/shooting/0427val1.shtml

Valeen Schnurr went home from the hospital Monday, four bullets
still inside her, lodged somewhere next to her indomitable
spirit.

The 18-year-old was among the most critically wounded in last
week's shooting at Columbine High School, with at least nine
bullet and shrapnel wounds down the left side of her body.

Her fast recovery has surprised everyone.

"When the doctor tells you, 'divine intervention,' what else can
you say?"  asks Valeen's mom, Shari Schnurr, who spoke from her
south Jefferson County home Monday afternoon, following a six-day
vigil at Swedish Medical Center.

Val passed a supreme test of faith during last week's terror.
Like Cassie Bernall, she answered yes to a gunman's taunting
question: Do you believe in God.

The gunman shot them both. Cassie died. Val almost did, too.

But miraculously, the bullets and shrapnel missed Valeen's vital
organs.  Another wound in her arm will likely leave her with
permanent nerve damage, but she can move her hand, a good sign.

It's not unusual for surgeons to leave bullets in shooting
victims, said Kim Feldhaus, an emergency room physician at Denver
Health Medical Center. Unless they threaten an organ or lodge in
a dangerous spot, they are essentially harmless, she said.

While her parents are prepared for post-traumatic stress in the
months to come, "The psychiatrist says she's doing unbelievably
well," says her father, Mark Schnurr.

Valeen was studying in the library last Tuesday with her good
friend Lauren Townsend when a teacher ran in yelling about a
gunman and warning the students to take cover. Valeen and Lauren
huddled together, listening to the guns and bombs in the
cafeteria below.

Slowly, in dribs and drabs, she has told her parents what
happened next. She saw the two gunman come into the library and
walk past the area where she hid. She thinks they threw a pipe
bomb because she saw books flying.

She heard other students being shot, some pleading for their
lives. The screams coming from her end of the room drew the
gunmen's attention, and they came back her way, guns blazing.

When the bullets and shrapnel hit Valeen, she slumped and
clutched her abdomen. "Oh my God, oh my God!" she remembers
saying.

"God!" one of the gunmen taunted her. "Do you really believe in
God?"

Moments earlier, Valeen saw what happened when Cassie was asked
the same question and answered yes.

"Val was scared to say, 'Yes,"' says Valeen's mother. "But she
was scared to say 'no,' because she thought she was dying."

Finally, she told the gunman, "Yes, I believe in God."

"Why?" he asked, as he stopped to reload.

"I do believe in God," she said, "and my Mom and Dad have taught
me about God." She thinks she babbled on for a few seconds after
that, but her memory is fuzzy. Finally, she remembers crawling
away, under a table.

And then the gunmen left. "She thinks crawling away may have
saved her life,"  says her mother.

She lay under the table, holding Lauren's hand. When someone
yelled, "They're leaving. Everybody out!" she touched Lauren's
face and said, "Wake up, it's time to get out!"

"She told me, 'I tried hard, Mom!"' Shari Schnurr says. "But she
wouldn't wake up!"

Lauren Townsend did not survive.

Valeen tightly wrapped her sweatshirt around her middle, to keep
pressure on her wounds, and tried to carry Lauren out. "But she
knew she was too weak,"  her mother says. "She had to leave her."

Her mother says Valeen prayed constantly as she fought to stay
awake and alert.

In the chaos outside, it took nearly an hour for emergency
personnel to get Valeen to a hospital. Paramedics who transported
her told her parents they did not expect her to live.

Shari Schnurr was at her job as a dental assistant when a friend
called to tell her about a gunman at Columbine. Thinking it must
involve some lovesick teen-ager, she wondered if her daughter, a
peer counselor with a penchant for helping troubled students, was
in the thick of it.

Before racing home, she called and left a message on her home
recorder: "Val, I know you're home. Sit on the sofa and wait.
I'll be there in five minutes."  "I was praying I'd see her car
in the driveway when I got home," she says.  "It wasn't there."

She got a call from her office saying Val had been wounded and
was taken to Swedish. "I was still thinking it would just a be a
little arm wound or something." Then she got to the hospital and
learned the horrific nature of her daughter's wounds. "At that
point, I fell apart."

Her husband arrived at the hospital moments after she did. They
didn't see their daughter until 5 p.m., after surgery. They
walked into the recovery room with their priest. When Val saw the
priest, she said, "I'm dying, aren't I?" "I had to assure her
that no, she'd be fine," says her dad.

One of the gunmen, Eric Harris, lived just around the block from
the Schnurr's.

"She says she didn't know him," says her mother, "but I know that
if he'd come to her and asked for her help, she would have been
there trying to help him."

"I couldn't be more proud of her," says her father. "I just hope
that through this, she sees how special she really is. There's
got to be a reason that all these guys survived.


=================================================================
           Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, YHVH, TZEVAOT

  FROM THE DESK OF:                    
                      *Mike Spitzer*     
                         ~~~~~~~~          

   The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
       Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
=================================================================



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