An accounting of the events at Granite Hills High

March 26, 2001

EL CAJON -- Billy Ditzler was twirling in a desk chair and explaining the ropes of Granite Hills High School to a new student in the attendance office when he heard a gunshot.

Dean Dan Barnes burst through the office's double doors and dove to the ground, his radio skidding across the floor.

"Everybody down!" he yelled.

El Cajon students return to classes following shooting

A second shot shattered the window five feet from 16-year-old Billy. Shards of glass flew onto his desk, onto the floor, everywhere.

Out the window, Billy saw senior Jason Hoffman pointing a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun at the office.

Billy hit the floor, knocking his head as he scrambled under the desk. He scrunched up and pulled the chair in. He was scared Hoffman was going to storm the office.

From his cubbyhole, Billy saw El Cajon Police Officer Richard Agundez Jr. rush out of the conference room next door, shouting into his police radio. He heard a loud click as Agundez pulled his Glock .40-caliber pistol from its holster and raised it in the air.

It all happened in only 90 seconds, but Billy and other students and teachers who saw or heard the shooting last Thursday say they lost all sense of time. Events blurred in their minds as adrenaline shot through their bodies.

After going through emergency drills since the all-too-recent shooting at Santana High School, some of the students and teachers in the school's 108 classrooms weren't even sure it was real. Then, panic swept through.

And once the news bulletin of a school shooting flashed over television screens for the second time in little more than two weeks, feelings of fear and dread hit parents all over town.

Not again.

Fifth period had just started, and a couple of students were still picking up trash from lunch in the grassy area next to the office when Hoffman pulled up to the school in his mother's Dodge pickup. He parked in the bus loop off East Madison Avenue.

History teacher Tim McCarthy was coming back from a lunch meeting and was chatting with a former student in the walkway outside Rooms 40 and 41. To his left was a grassy area with three eucalyptus trees and a hexagonal cement slab with several benches.

Across the grassy area was the office, where Billy was talking to his new friend, and Agundez and staff administrators were at a small party in the conference room. Two teachers, Fran Zumwalt and Priscilla Murphy, were walking away from the office toward the south end of the 60-acre campus.

Tom Smith, the social teacher in Room 41, closed his door. McCarthy, who is 44, figured he'd been talking too loudly.

Barnes stopped on his way back to the office to say hello to McCarthy. He told the students picking up trash to get to class, then continued on, across the grass.

As McCarthy was engrossed in his conversation, he saw Hoffman, walking purposefully from the bus loop. In the back of his mind, it struck him that Hoffman had a shotgun resting on his shoulder. McCarthy didn't see the .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol tucked into Hoffman's waistband.

About 6 feet tall and more than 200 pounds, Hoffman was a big kid. He was wearing a dark, long-sleeved top, blue jeans and light-colored tennis shoes. His hair was closely cropped.

Hoffman was almost to the first eucalyptus tree and Barnes was at the double doors of the office when Hoffman yelled an expletive at Barnes. Hoffman pulled the shotgun off his shoulder and fired at the dean.

McCarthy didn't see anything get hit. He wondered if Hoffman was firing blanks. Was this a weird emergency drill? It all seemed so unreal.

Then he saw Hoffman pull back the slide on the underside of the shotgun, pumping it to fire again. This time, Hoffman's shots shattered the office window.

McCarthy realized this was no drill.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he said to the former student, who was staring in disbelief.

The two of them headed south, rounding the corner of Room 41, and ran to McCarthy's classroom, Room 51. The curtains were already drawn. He locked the door behind them.

Jennifer Speidel, 17, was sitting next to the open door of Room 40, the classroom closest to the bus loop. Her government teacher, James Davis, had just finished taking roll.

A student walked in past Jennifer with a strange look on his face and started to run to the front of the class.

"That guy's got a . . . ," he said, his voice cut off by the blast of gunfire.

Jennifer stood up and saw Hoffman standing on the grass, pointing his shotgun at the office. He glanced over his shoulder and she swore he looked right at her. She froze.

Davis looked out the window and recognized Hoffman, who had been in his class the year before. He saw the student walk slowly backward, then take one step forward and fire a second round of shots at the office.

Students in Davis' class dived under desks and tables.

Davis saw Agundez poke his head out of the office and start to fire at Hoffman, who turned and ran toward the street, out of Davis' line of sight. Agundez came out of the office and fired again.

Jennifer and some of the students ran into a hallway office that links the four classrooms in her building. As she heard Agundez shooting, she prayed that Hoffman wouldn't run into their room.

Pulling out her cell phone, she called 911. She could barely breathe and talk at the same time. "There's been a shooting at Granite Hills," she said, her body shaking.

Two of Agundez's bullets hit Hoffman in the jaw and buttock. One of them hit Hoffman's shotgun, disabling it.

After five people had been hit with his shots, Hoffman ran into the street. Agundez fired again. Hoffman ran a few more steps, dropped the shotgun, ran a few more steps, then collapsed.

"Shots fired, suspect down," Agundez said into his radio.

It was 12:55 p.m.

Jennifer Strom, 15, had started school at Granite Hills about a week and half earlier, only a few weeks after having a heart bypass operation.

She was sitting next to an open door in computer class with about 30 other students when she heard a series of gun shots. They had a hollow sound, like a hammer hitting a piece of wood on a wall.

The teacher, Sharon Purviance, told students to get under their desks.

Then, there were four or five more shots.

Two injured teachers charged through the door, with panic on their faces.

"Somebody's shooting," one of them called out.

Fran Zumwalt, who is 47 and a social sciences teacher, had been hit with six pellets, one in the jaw, four in her left leg and one in her right. Priscilla Murphy, a 53-year-old resource teacher in special education, also had been shot.

The teacher's aide, a small-framed woman, ran over and tried to pull the door closed. She had to pull several times before she could get it shut.

Jennifer and about seven other students ran into the office next door. She tried to call her mother from the phone there, but the line was busy. She couldn't reach her soon-to-be stepdad either.

One of the students got on the Internet and found a Web site that had already posted the news bulletin. Someone really was outside shooting people.

A few minutes later, a police officer knocked on a window. There were four or five other officers with him. Purviance cracked the door to talk to them. They told her to keep the door closed until they came back.

They were searching the school, just in case the shooter had an accomplice.

It wasn't long before a police officer came to take Murphy and Zumwalt to the ambulances. One of the officers put his hand behind Jennifer's neck and firmly guided her out of the classroom. She had been short of breath and they were worried about her heart.

On the way to the ambulance, they walked her past some lockers and a trail of blood drops. The officer told her not to step in it.

As she passed the eagle statue in front of the school, she could see the shooter lying on his side down the street. His hands were cuffed in front of his face, which was covered in blood.

She looked away. She didn't want to be traumatized. But she couldn't help looking back and watching as he was loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher. The paramedics had cut off some of his clothing and left it in the street.

"He looked really gushy and bloody," she said. "I guess he got shot."

Even after the firing had stopped, campus supervisors told everyone to stay down in the administrative office. Billy Ditzler, still in his hiding place, was worried. With so many shots fired, he could only wonder if there were two people with guns.

Police officers streamed into the office, then Agundez came back to see if everyone was OK.

Principal Georgette Torres went on the intercom and announced that all the classrooms were in lockdown and that everyone should stay where they were.

About 20 minutes later, the officers said they were going to release people. Billy's right arm had been cut by some glass and his neck was hurting. He was crying and shaking and in a lot of pain. Two counselors got on either side of him and helped him out of the office.

Thank God, he thought. I hope this thing's over.

They helped him get through the police, the ambulances, the parents and the students, down to the corner of East Madison and Fourth Street. There, two firefighters took over, wrapping his arms around their shoulders and lifting him off the ground.

They carried him past the students, who were being evacuated, single file, one class at a time, across the street and into Kennedy Park. Some of the girls looked at him with their mouths agape and started to cry.

* * * * *

The next day, Billy went back to the school to put some flowers at the shrine of balloons and hand-painted signs thanking Agundez. He walked over to the front of the office and sat there for a long time. He felt sick to his stomach. He'd thought that everyone at Granite Hills had basically gotten along pretty well.

"(Hoffman) could've talked to somebody. He didn't have to go and hurt all these people," he said. "There's tons of counselors, tons of teachers, tons of students to talk to."