- NEW: Another student wrote a farewell on his hand, fearing the worst
- Arapahoe High School father posts texts with his son amid shooting response
- “Ok I am here and will be here,” Kevin Conboy texts. “Until I have you.”
- The shooter killed himself after wounding one other student
(CNN) — Kevin Conboy was backing out of his driveway for a midday burrito run with a friend when he heard the sirens.
He was driving down the street when he saw the flashing lights at Arapahoe High School.
That’s when what Conboy calls “initial parent paranoia” set in.
“Are you ok” Conboy texted his high-schooler son, Ian, at 12:48 p.m. Friday, at first fearing not a shooting but something awry with his diabetic son’s health.
“I’m fine,” Ian texted back. But the school’s on lockdown, he added. Something happened.
“Whoa,” Conboy texted back.
What followed was a remarkable string of 70 more texts, displaying remarkable calm and the bond between a father and son amid a crisis that made national headlines.
Conboy, a Web developer and self-avowed “data sharer,” said Monday he posted the texts to his website to revisit later, to write about more, to remind him on some distant day that “my relationship with my son is absolutely where I want it to be.”
Shooting victim described as sweet, smart
“We’re in lockdown”
Friday’s shooting began at 12:33 p.m., when, according to police accounts, 18-year-old student Karl Pierson walked into the Centennial, Colorado, school armed with a pump-action shotgun, a machete and a backpack containing three Molotov cocktails, a bandolier of ammunition across his chest.
According to police, Pierson shot 17-year-old Claire Esther Davis once in the head amid shots fired randomly into school hallways. He also ignited one of the firebombs in the school library before killing himself in the back corner of the school library.
Conboy didn’t know any of that when he heard the sirens and saw the lights at the high school he once attended and where Ian now goes to school.
But he knew something was wrong. He steered the car not toward the Qdoba restaurant where he and a friend had planned to have lunch, but toward his son’s school.
“Are you ok” he texted. “There are ambulances going to Arapahoe.”
“I’m fine,” the boy wrote back. “And yeah. We’re in lockdown.”
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