THE daughter of a hero teacher who lost his life while saving hundreds of students during the Columbine High School massacre now oversees the same troubled youth program his teen killers were enrolled in, seeking to prevent future similar tragedies.
Coni Sanders told The U.S. Sun that after her father, William “Dave” Sanders was fatally shot on April 20, 1999, she was quietly consumed by a single burning question: What led Columbine gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to callously gun down their classmates before taking their own lives?
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Over 49 horrifying minutes, Harris, 18, and Klebold, 17, claimed the lives of 12 of their classmates and one teacher, Sanders, in a senseless tragedy that left the nation scarred and forever altered the American psyche.
Sanders was shot twice by the gunmen after ushering more than 200 students out of the school’s cafeteria and guiding them to safety shortly after the first rounds of gunfire were discharged in the parking lot sometime after 11:15 am.
The 47-year-old bled out in a classroom for more than three-and-a-half hours in the arms of a student who tried in vain to save him before eventually succumbing to his wounds.
Coni Sanders said she will forever remain proud of her father and the courage he showed in the face of such overwhelming terror, no matter how angry and resentful she may have felt in the immediate aftermath.
And it was after his death that Coni decided to pick up where her father left off: by trying to prevent violence at its source.
“At the beginning, right after it happened, there was a little bit of ‘why us?’ but secretly, in my head, I was just thinking, ‘what happened to those boys?'” shared Coni.
“And I didn’t share that with anybody because it just felt so wrong to be thinking about those boys as much as I was, the boys that murdered my father.
“But I really wanted to know how to stop it before it starts […] and what was so wrong in their lives that they made this fantasy of theirs a reality.”
Embarking on a lifelong quest for answers, Coni studied psychology at college and spent seven years working in a mental health hospital on low pay before being able to dedicate herself to helping disaffected young people.
Coni is now a mental health counselor and therapist who works with the same justice system diversion program that Harris and Klebold were placed on in the months before the shooting.
The pair were arrested before the attack for breaking into a van and given anger management sessions to avoid detention.
Coni sees the work she’s doing today as a way of carrying her father’s legacy forward, saving people, and preventing future tragedies by helping violent offenders choose different paths.
“I kind of see myself as a pre-responder, preventing future victims like my dad so we don’t have so much victim services and I really see it as an honor to do this work,” said Coni.
“I’ve even had some clients come in who’ve said, like, ‘Man, if I had a gun, I would have shot up my school.’
“There’s just so much pain and grief in adolescence.
“And so this is how I carry on his legacy.”
THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS
Today, 25 years on, Coni concedes that she’s no closer to answering the question of what caused Columbine, or the underlying causes of the countless school shootings that followed in its wake. However, she is determined to dedicate her life to trying.
The 50-year-old – who is now three years older than her father was when he was killed – said she is incredibly disturbed by how normalized mass shootings have become.
According to The Washington Post, there have been 404 school shootings in the US since Columbine, with more than 370,000 students experiencing gun violence in places intended for learning.
I kind of see myself as a pre-responder, preventing future victims like my dad so we don’t have so much victim services and I really see it as an honor to do this work.
Coni Sanders
In 2024 alone, as of March 6, there had been at least 16 school shootings across the country, according to CNN.
Three of those shootings were on college campuses, and 13 were on K-12 school grounds. The incidents left nine people dead and at least 23 others injured.
Citing Columbine as a sort of ignition point for the school shooting crisis, Coni said, “When Virginia Tech happened, it was like, how could this happen again? And then when Sandy Hook happened, it really felt like this has to be it, that’s where the buck stops because they were babies, but then Marjory Stoneman Douglas happened [in 2018].
“And now it’s become so normalized. When Columbine happened, everyone paid attention […] but when these things happen now they’re forgotten about and people feel hopeless to change or stop them.
“The problem is, these shootings are a cultural issue. It’s people disconnecting from one another, and I don’t think there’s any one thing that can solve the issue.
“I think it’s a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and there are no right answers, even politically. Even those who are pro-gun and anti-gun all have the same wish, for kids not to die, but that gets lost in the discourse.”
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A TWIST OF FATE
Coni’s dad, Dave Sanders, was a beloved business teacher and basketball coach who had worked at Columbine for nearly 25 years at the time of the April 1999 massacre.
He wasn’t even meant to be at work that day, but an argument with his wife the morning of changed the trajectory of his life – and potentially helped to save the lives of hundreds of students.
Instead of going to dinner to celebrate his mother-in-law’s birthday on April 20, Sanders opted to go to work.
Normally, he’d never leave the house without kissing Coni’s mom, Linda, goodbye. But because of their petty feud, he decided to wave to her from the driveway instead.
Coni’s mom watched Sanders leave for work from the bedroom window, oblivious to the fact it was the last time she’d ever see him alive.
Within hours, a dark shadow would be cast over the picturesque mountain town of Littleton, Colorado.
At around 11:15 am, a volley of gunfire was heard thundering out in the parking lot of Columbine High.
Wielding an arsenal of guns and homemade bombs, trench-coat-clad Harris and Klebold began indiscriminately firing at their classmates, leaving two dead on the lawn before making their way inside the school toward the cafeteria in search of more victims.
Sanders heard the commotion outside and ran to the cafeteria to sound the alarm.
Within minutes, Sanders shepherded roughly 200 students and staff to safety up a staircase, urging them to find cover elsewhere in the school and stay away from any windows.
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When Klebold and Harris burst into the cafeteria, Sanders called out to those still inside with him, “Get down!”
Gunshots echoed and students fell.
Eventually, Sanders called out for everyone to run, and the coach’s instructions were quickly obeyed.
As smoke filled the cafeteria, Sanders followed the last of the students up the stairs and attempted to secure as much of the school as he could.
But on his heroic quest, he encountered Harris and Klebold in a hallway on the north side of the building.
One of the two gunmen opened fire and struck him twice – once in the back, and once in the neck.
A wounded and heavily bleeding Sanders stumbled into a nearby classroom where terrified students had gathered, seeking cover in closets and under tables.
Those students, in a desperate effort to keep him alive, removed their T-shirts to hold them against his wounds and stem the bleeding.
Another student removed Sanders’ wallet from his pocket and showed him a picture of his wife and three daughters to keep him conscious, whispering to him, “They’re coming. Just hold on. You can do it.”
“I’m not going to make it,” Sanders responded.
“Tell my girls I love them.”
A FAMILY’S HORROR
The first Coni learned of the horrifying situation at Columbine was when she walked into her boss’ office after overhearing a conversation he was having with a colleague about “stupid kids” at the school.
“I poked my head in and said, ‘Hey, watch your mouth. My dad teaches there,’ and everybody just turned white, and they pushed me out of the office and down the hall into an empty room and told me there’d been an incident at Columbine,” Coni recounted to The U.S. Sun.
“It wasn’t clear what was happening, they told me something about there being hostages, but my response was immediate denial.
“I told them there are 2,000 kids at that school so my dad is fine. I said he was fine and I went back to my desk, but people kept circling me and told me to go home.”
While she was otherwise nonchalant, Coni’s concerned colleagues urged her to leave work, and one even offered to drive her to her mother’s home.
Coni reluctantly accepted the offer and they drove the short journey to her mom’s home in complete silence, with the radio switched off.
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Coni walked inside her mom’s home to find her, her sisters, and other relatives kneeling on the floor, silently watching the news on her father’s new TV, trying to spot him in the live images of students and staff being evacuated from the school.
“There would be the occasional random scream of ‘Is that him?!’ before it went silent again,” said Coni.
“I remember seeing some kids with their shirts off and thinking maybe they have tried to stop the bleeding on somebody or something.
“And then the helicopter zoomed in on this sign in a window that said, ‘1 bleeding to death.’
“At that point, my mom just lost it and she said, ‘That poor student I just can’t imagine what’s happening in there right now.’
“But that sign was actually about my dad.
“The students that were in the room with him as he was bleeding to death had tried to call 911 and get him help but nobody was coming.
“He was in that room for three-and-a-half hours bleeding to death before they reached him – but it was too late.”
COLUMBINE REMEMBERED
While Sanders lay dying, Harris and Klebold continued the rampage they’d spent months plotting.
After aimlessly firing their weapons throughout the school halls and in the auditorium, seeking to rack up as many casualties as possible, the deranged pair eventually entered the library at 11:29 pm.
Inside, 52 students and two staff members were gathered, largely oblivious to the horrors unfolding elsewhere on campus.
Some students were shot dead at their desks, one of whom was still holding a pencil when he was fatally struck in the back.
Harris played a twisted game of “peek-a-boo” with others, suddenly ducking underneath the tables and opening fire at close range upon those he found clambering for cover beneath.
Many in the library played dead.
By the time Klebold and Harris left seven minutes later, 10 were no longer playing.
Student saved by Saunders speaks
Amy Over was just weeks away from graduation at Columbine High School in April 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold burst onto campus wielding an arsenal of weapons.
The 18-year-old was excited to wrap up the school year and move on to college.
Having received confirmation that she’d landed a basketball scholarship to her chosen school the night before, Amy stopped by to see her coach, Dave Sanders, before class to share the good news and thank him.
“Little did I know that was the last time I was ever going to see him,” Amy told The U.S. Sun in 2022.
“But I got to thank him and just, you know, give him a hug and a high five before heading off to my classes.”
Amy had been sitting in the cafeteria at 11:19 am when she heard a succession of loud popping noises coming from just outside the front doors.
Sanders, who was also inside the cafeteria, called out for the students to take cover and stay away from the windows.
“So I ran to a table by one of the front entrance doors in the cafeteria with one of my peers,” recounted Amy.
“And I just looked to my coach for the next instructions, because I trusted him, I knew him, and I knew the serious looks on his face meant that this was a life or death situation.”
The room fell eerily quiet, Amy remembers. But the deafening silence was suddenly broken by a shout from Sanders telling everyone to run as Klebold and Harris burst inside.
Amy followed Sanders’ instructions without hesitation. She put her head down and ran as fast as she could, passing by the bodies of victims as she clamored towards the exit.
Dave Sanders saved her life.
The gunmen then made their way into the cafeteria where they attempted to detonate two 35-pound propane bombs they’d planted in backpacks but were unsuccessful.
They returned to the library at 12:05 pm and added themselves to the dead with synchronized self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
By this time, SWAT teams had already entered the building but the fates of Klebold and Harris wouldn’t be realized for another two-and-a-half hours.
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Emergency services finally made it to the science room where Sanders had been bleeding out sometime before 3:30 pm, or nearly four hours after he was shot.
He was found lying on the ground with a pile of blood-stained T-shirts on and around his body, surrounded by students who had desperately tried to save his life.
The SWAT team ordered the students to exit the room slowly with their hands on their heads.
Student Aaron Hancey, who had been administering first aid to Sanders for the duration of those almost four hours, asked to stay at the coach’s side.
Reluctantly, Hancey agreed to leave under the instruction of officers.
Sometime after, Sanders joined the dead. He was the only teacher killed at Columbine.
Sanders joined 12 students, ages 14 to 18, who all perished.
Twenty-four others were injured.
RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME
Coni spent the 25th anniversary as she has spent each of the last somber milestones, by attending a service at the school with her family.
Regularly, she says survivors approach her to thank her for her father’s bravery.
Some have even handed their children to her in a show of gratitude, infants who would’ve otherwise been deprived the chance to live had it not been for Sanders.
Coni said that after her dad died, she was angry at him for prioritizing the lives of others, rather than seeking to save himself to return home to his family.
She, her mom, and her siblings all believed he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But now, she is overcome with pride about his heroic actions and believes he was right where he was meant to be.
“We didn’t want him to be a hero, we wanted him to come home,” said Coni.
“Right after it happened we had some anger towards him, like, ‘How could you do that? How could you run towards danger?’
“We were quite selfish, which is a common reaction. Right after it happened we felt he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and we didn’t understand what had happened.
“But over the years, we’ve come to determine that he was in the right place at the right time.
“We are so proud of him […] he was a teacher for 24 years, and his influence went far beyond the walls of his classroom or the bounds of the playing fields he coached on.
“Forever, for the remainder of time, he’s left a mark on the world.
“And there are hundreds of people still living today who have had children who wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for him – and that’s all down to my dad.”
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