STEM School Highlands Ranch: The Students Who Fought Back

On May seventh, twenty nineteen, two students entered STEM School Highlands Ranch in Douglas County and opened fire. One student was killed and eight were wounded. What distinguished this attack from others was what several students chose to do.

The school, a charter institution south of Denver serving kindergarten through twelfth grade, was in class when Devon Erickson, eighteen, and Alec McKinney, sixteen, entered with handguns. In one classroom, a group of students charged directly at Erickson rather than flee. Eighteen-year-old Kendrick Castillo, along with classmates Brendan Bialy and Joshua Jones, rushed the gunman. Castillo was shot and killed in the confrontation. His action, along with his classmates', is credited with preventing additional deaths. Erickson surrendered the weapon to the students who tackled him.

McKinney told investigators the attack had been planned for weeks and was motivated by years of bullying, including harassment related to his gender identity. McKinney, who was born female and identifies as male, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Erickson was convicted at trial and received a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.

The Highlands Ranch shooting came less than a month after the twentieth anniversary of the Columbine High School attack, which took place about twelve miles to the northwest. The proximity in both geography and calendar was not lost on the community, which had spent two decades building memorials and programs around the earlier tragedy.

Kendrick Castillo was remembered by classmates and family as someone who had wanted to become an engineer, who was known for helping people, and who in the final moments of his life ran toward the danger rather than away from it.