news analysis:
Glimmers of hope in a year of tragedies

A boy comforts one of the 24 victims wounded during the April 20 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in which two shooters killed 13 people before taking their own lives

By Anne McDermott CNN Correspondent Special to CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- I went to Littleton, Colorado, this spring, expecting horror. That is what I found, but I also encountered kindness.

Make no mistake. The community was reeling from the April 20 shootings at Columbine High School. The residents were devastated and disbelieving, but they managed to deal politely with the hundreds of reporters, at times even compassionately.

Most of the journalists who swarmed around the school seemed somehow more humbled. Maybe because it was all so terrible. To think that two teenagers with guns and bombs would walk into their own school and open fire. It just does not happen. But it did.

None of the people at Columbine then will probably ever be the same. Not with 15 dead -- 12 students, a teacher, and the two killers.

And yet there are people like Richard Castaldo, a student wounded in the massacre. Confined to a wheelchair, he tries hard to do some of the things he used to do. He is not giving up, nor is he going under. The shooting is still there -- but so is he.

If only Columbine had been the last of it.

That kind of a year

Children hold hands as police escort them out of their pre-school at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles following the August 10 shooting in which three children, a teenager and an adult were wounded

In August, television viewers were subjected to the chilling scene of Los Angeles cops gently leading groups of pre-schoolers out of a community center, away from a man with a gun who had walked in and started shooting in rapid succession. Five people were wounded, including three children. Incredibly no one was killed, but police later charged the gunman with the nearby shooting death of a postal worker, a man who was simply doing his job, making his rounds.

Again, trembling parents gathered, waiting for their children. The little ones seemed remarkably calm. They did what their teachers had often told them -- hold one another's hands -- as they followed the officers to safety.

In July a man in Atlanta killed his family, then opened fire at two office buildings, killing nine people and wounding 13 before killing himself.

Emergency workers attend to a victim at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth after the shooting on September 15 in which seven people were killed and seven others wounded

And in September, at a church in Fort Worth, a man with a history of talking to himself and frightening his neighbors blasted away with a gun. Among the seven dead and seven wounded were teenagers who had come to the church for a special prayer rally.

It was that kind of year. Lots of killings, lots of shootings. And yet crime statistics indicated the level of violence was down. Neighborhoods were safer. All of us were safer, statistically at least.

Which only reinforces perhaps how random these acts of violence are. They indeed can happen anywhere. And so we have reason for hope.

Promises to keep

You only have to go back to Columbine. The kids there are struggling to do something that is difficult for teenagers to do: put aside petty rivalries of high school cliques and reach out to one another.

They began the process back in April when they left their cards and flowers at a makeshift shrine to the dead.

One hand-lettered sign, streaked with what looked like tears, said simply, "Sorry." On another was written, "We will not let this happen ever again."

Can such a promise be kept? Maybe -- if enough people think about all this. As the carnage continued throughout 1999, they certainly have had enough reason.

Anne McDermott is a correspondent for CNN's Los Angeles bureau. She spent two weeks in Littleton, Colorado, covering the aftermath of the massacre at Columbine High School. She also reported from Fort Worth on the church shootings.