Suddenly, at 1:44 P.M., the cops finally nabbed someone. “We’ve got three [students], with their hands up with two police cars around them,” a reporter told CNN. “Their hands are up.” The cops detained them at gunpoint.
Word spread quickly to the library. “They surrendered!” a woman screamed. “It’s over!”
They celebrated there briefly. The truth trickled back slowly.
Just before 2:30, an officer riding along in a news chopper spotted somebody moving inside the library. He was just inside the blown-out windows, covered in blood and behaving curiously: sagging against the frame, clearing away shards of glass. He was going to jump!
The officer radioed a SWAT team. They revved the Loomis armored truck and raced toward the building.
“Hang on, kid!” one of them called. “We’re coming to get you.”
Patrick Ireland was confused. He heard someone yell, but couldn’t see anyone or figure out where the voices were coming from. He felt dizzy. His vision was blurry and one big section was blank. He was unaware that blood was streaming down into his eyes. The shouting inside his head was more important: Get out! Get out!
But the muddled outside yelling had caught his attention. Why were they talking so slowly? Everything was deep and mumbly, like his head was underwater. Where was he? Not sure. Something had happened, something horrible. Shot? Get out! Get out!
Hours earlier, Patrick Ireland had taken refuge under the table with his friends. Makai and Dan were down there, and a girl he didn’t know. Corey and Austin had gone to investigate and ended up somewhere unknown. Patrick put his head down and closed his eyes. The shooting was barely under way in the library when he heard Makai moan. Patrick opened his eyes. Makai’s knee was bleeding. Patrick leaned over to administer pressure. The top of his head poked over the edge of the tabletop. Dylan saw him, and fired the shotgun again. Patrick went blank.
Patrick’s skull had stopped several buckshot fragments. Other debris lodged in his scalp as well—probably wood splinters torn from the tabletop in the blast. One pellet got through. It burrowed six inches through spongy brain matter, entering through the scalp just above his hairline on the left, and lodging near the middle rear. Bits of his optical center were missing; most of his language capacity was wiped out. He regained consciousness, but words were hard to form and difficult to interpret as well. Pathways for all sorts of functions had been severed. Perception was impeded, so he couldn’t tell when he was speaking gibberish or jumbling incoming sounds. The left brain controls the right side of the body, and the pellet cut through that connection. Patrick was paralyzed on the right side. He had been shot in the right foot; it was broken and bleeding—he didn’t even know. He felt nothing on that side.
Patrick drifted in and out. He was semiconscious when the killers left the room. All the kids were running for the back exit. Makai and Dan tried to get his attention. He returned a blank stare.
“Come on, man,” one of them said. “Let’s go!”
It didn’t register. They tried to drag him, but both had been shot in the legs and Patrick was limp. They got nowhere. The killers could return any moment. Eventually, they gave up and fled.
Sometime later, Patrick woke up on the floor again. Get out! He tried to get out. Half his body refused. He couldn’t stand; he couldn’t even crawl right. He reached with his left hand, gripped something, and dragged himself forward. His useless side trailed behind. He made a little progress, and his brain gave out.
He came to repeatedly and began again. No one knows how many times. A bloody trail revealed his convoluted path. He started less than two table lengths from the windows, but he headed off in the wrong direction. Then he hit obstacles: bodies, table legs, and chairs. Some he pushed away, others had to be maneuvered around. He kept heading for the light. If he could just make it to the windows maybe someone would see him. If he had to, maybe he would jump.
It took three hours to get there. He found an easy chair beside the opening. It was sturdy enough not to tip, and might provide cover if the killers returned. He wedged his back against the short wall and worked himself upward, then grabbed hold of the chair for a final push. He propped himself against the girder between two large panes and rested awhile to recover his strength. Then he flipped around. He had one more task before he took the plunge.
The problem was that Patrick couldn’t jump. There was a waist-high window ledge to get over. The best he could do was lean forward and tumble over it headfirst onto the sidewalk. His gut would bear down on the sill as he rolled over it. It was a jagged mess. The gun blasts had blown out most of the glass, but left shards clinging around the frame. Patrick stood on one leg, braced his shoulder against the girder, and picked away the chunks with the same hand. He was meticulous. He didn’t want to get hurt.
That’s when he heard the murky voices.
“Stay there! We’re gonna get you!”
The armored truck pulled up beneath the window. A squadron of SWAT officers leapt out. Nearby teams provided cover from either side. One group took aim from behind a fire truck; snipers sprawled on rooftops trained their scopes from farther back. If this rescue mission was fired upon, they’d be ready.
Patrick wasn’t waiting. He thought he was. He remembers them calling “OK, it’s safe! Go ahead and jump. We’ll catch you.” The rescue team recalls it differently, and the video shows them still scrambling into place.
Patrick collapsed forward. The ledge caught him at the waist, and he folded in half, head dangling toward the ground. The SWAT team wasn’t ready, but Patrick was frantic and didn’t understand. He wiggled forward, but couldn’t get much traction from the inside, because his feet were already up off the floor.
A SWAT officer clambered up the side of the truck and threw his weapon to the ground. Another followed close behind him. As the first man hit the truck roof, Patrick kicked his good leg up toward the ceiling, and reached down for the sidewalk with his arms. That nearly did it. One more thrust and he would be free.
The officers lunged toward him and each man caught one of his hands. Patrick kicked again, completely vertical, and his hips pulled away from the frame. The officers clenched and his hands barely moved. The rest of his body spun around like a gymnast gripping the high bar, until he whacked into the side of the truck. The officers kept hold and eased him down onto the hood. He tried to break away, still desperate to flee. They lowered him down to other officers, but he kicked hard and his legs slammed against the ground.
They pulled him upright, and he tried to climb into the front seat. The SWAT team was confused. What was he trying to do? They assumed he understood he was the patient. He did not. He had to get out of there. Here was a truck; he was ready to go.
They got him to a triage site, and then straight into an ambulance. On the drive to St. Anthony Central Hospital, paramedics cut off Patrick’s bloody clothes—everything but his undershorts. They removed his gold necklace with the water-ski pendant. He had six dollars in his wallet. He was not wearing shoes. They confirmed gunshot wounds to his left forehead and his right foot, as well as a number of superficial wounds about his head. His elbow was lacerated. As they worked, they tested Patrick’s mental acuity and tried to keep him conscious. Do you know where you are? Your name? Your birthday? Patrick could answer those questions—slowly, laboriously. The answers were easy, but he struggled to form them into words. Most of his brain tissue was intact. Sections could function in isolation, but the connecting circuitry was confused. Patrick’s brain was less successful forming new memories. He knew he had been shot, by a man in black with a long gun. That was true. The masks he described on the killers’ faces were not. He insisted he had been shot at a hospital, in the emergency room.