July - August 1999
| Vol. 10, No. 4

One of the Lucky Ones ... by Kevin Vicroy

RACQUETBALL magazine caught up with 17-year-old Brandon Burgess at National Singles in Houston where he was competing in the men’s B and 24-and-under a/b divisions. He’d just finished up the spring term at his “new” school — Chatfield High in Littleton, Colorado.

Walking through a Chatfield corridor with friend Makai Hall, Brandon Burgess stopped short. Thud . . . thud . . . thud.

“Did you hear that? What was that?” whispered Makai. Realizing that the memories of the Columbine tragedy were still painfully fresh in Hall’s mind, Brandon calmed his friend. “Yea I did, Makai. I’ll go look for you.” Burgess, a senior-to-be at Columbine, walked down the hall to identify the thumping.

“It was just some guy pounding on the wall,” Burgess said after returning. Innocent enough, this time, but among the large, re-located student body of Columbine, Burgess is one of the lucky ones. He knows exactly how narrowly he missed the horror of April 20.

“I went to a marketing banquet because I was getting an award,” Burgess said. “We got done about 10:45 a.m. and the place we were at was about 15 minutes from the school. I was going to go to the library to study with some of my friends for a test.”

Had he stayed on schedule, Burgess would have entered the library at approximately 11:05 a.m. The first call to 911 reporting gunshots was received at 11:25 a.m.

“I wound up, for some odd reason, just going home,” Burgess said. “That’s what has troubled me — I went home for some reason and my friends wound up getting shot.”

Among the students that would have met up with Brandon in the library before the shooting were Hall and another friend, Pat Ireland. Later, in one of the most horrifying moments captured on video, it was Ireland who threw his limp body to the edge of a second-story window as members of the SWAT team gathered on top of an armored truck to haul him to safety.

“They (Harris and Klebold) tossed a pipe bomb over to where they were,” Burgess said, describing his friends’ experience. “It rolled against my friend Dan’s leg. Makai grabbed it and tossed it and it exploded 10 feet from where they were or they all would have died.” According to Hall, the killers must have figured that everyone in that area had died from the explosion and moved on down the hallway.

“I knew five of them that died,” Burgess said. “Two other friends — one got shot 14 times with buckshot in the leg and then he had a shrapnel wound on the jawbone. Another one got shot in the knee.”

Like so many others awaiting news in thier homes, Brandon’s father Bruce was terrified for his son. A familiar pair at most Colorado state events, Bruce and Brandon share a passion for the sport that would later turn into an important part of the healing process. Weeks prior, the two had planned a road trip to Las Vegas to attend the Pro Nationals.

A few days following the brutal shootings, Brandon, his father and friends Jesse and Enrique Carbajal decided to stick with the plan and drive to Las Vegas. The trip provided Brandon with healing time, needed distance and interaction with friends and fellow racquetball players who could help him understand and work through his nightmarish experience.

“Sudsy was really helpful too,” Burgess said. “In between games of his match, he called me over and was like, ‘Was that your school?’ He really showed concern. We probably talked for 20-30 minutes at the tournament. Even when I saw him today (at the National Singles), he asked how everything was going back there.”

For “some odd reason,” Brandon chose not to return to school until after lunch. After the carnage had already begun.

“I feel guilty, I really do,” Brandon said of his choice. “Maybe I could have helped carry Pat out or something like that, instead of having him go out the window. Maybe I could have helped somebody else. But, on the other side of the coin, maybe I wouldn’t be here today.”