Popular Senior Class Athlete Was Lone Black Fatality In Columbine High School Massacre In Colorado

By all accounts, 18-year-old Isaiah Shoels was a winner. Though he was born with a hole in his heart, at 7 months old he survived surgery and grew to be a healthy young man who enjoyed football and was a popular member of the weightlifting team at Columbine High School in rural Littleton, CO.

The feisty, 4-foot-11, 120-pounder could bench press twice his weight, setting a record at the school.

On occasion he did landscape work for the city parks.

Isaiah was to graduate in 32 days, and the well-liked senior looked forward to achieving his dream of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a record producer. He ultimately hoped to achieve the success of his famous idols Sean "Puffy" Combs and Master P.

But it all ended when two crazed White classmates, cloaked in black trench coats, armed with two sawed-off shot guns, a semi-automatic rifle and handgun, and a variety of homemade explosives, threw a bomb into the school library, where Isaiah was writing a paper, and proceeded to shoot panic-stricken students. One of the gunmen, finding Isaiah crouched under a table, laughed, yelled, "Oh, there's that little nigger," and shot Isaiah at point blank range in the face.

"He was a special kid," Isaiah's father, Michael Shoels, 42, told JET. "He had heart surgery at 7 months old, and he had another one and he beat both of them. Isaiah was a winner. He was a pretty rounded kid. They have an old saying that you come in with your boots laced up ready to go. That's my son. That's why I call him my small warrior. He was small in stature, but he had a big heart."

Shoels was the only Black among the 15 killed during 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold's killing rampage at the 1,965 student high school. Twelve students and one teacher were struck down. Another 23 were wounded in their attack that began in the school parking lot, moved to the cafeteria and up to the second-floor library.

And though law enforcement officials found some 30 bombs planted throughout the school and in the two teens' homes, signalling their intent to kill many more of their classmates, young Shoels was definitely one they singled out to get, his father told JET.

"If you knew Isaiah, you knew everybody loved him. So he went to this school where all of these White children went. Some of them just really loved him. So he was targeted out because he was an athlete, he was Black and he was popular. So he had three strikes against him."

The school had only 15 Black students, Mr. Shoels reported.

"All of them were possibly targeted because they were Black. They were going in there to kill people of color, athletes and the girls, that's what I heard," he said.

"We do know that he was targeted out. They went in that school intentionally to kill him. He was one of them; I'm not saying he was the only one on the list, but he was the first one. Because when they hit the school they were saying, `Where's that little nigger?' Everybody heard them say that while they were shooting."

Isaiah's murderers ended their hours-long killing spree by committing suicide. The two, who idolized Adolf Hitler, were members of a school gang called the Trench Coat Mafia, some 15 Whites who wore Black trench coats, even in the summer, and openly expressed their dislike of athletes and Blacks.

Ironically, the Shoels moved to Littleton, a middle-class suburb of 35,000 southwest of Denver, only a year and a half ago in hopes of improving their family's life, according to 38-year-old Vonda Shoels, Isaiah's mother.

"It was a nice area," she told JET, citing the better schools and better opportunities for her husband and children. The couple, who have been married 18 years, have five children (including Isaiah), Michelle, 15, and Anthony, 15 (who both attended Columbine High School), Melissa, 12, and Abuubaka, 11.

Mrs. Shoels said that day began as many others during the past month with Isaiah's growing excitement over his impending graduation. His favorite subject was drama, and he planned to attend the Denver Arts Institute.

She was at home when "a neighbor called and told me I needed to get up to the school because she was watching the TV."

Seconds later, their daughter, Michelle, called to inform them she'd escaped, but she did not know about her brothers.

The couple rushed to the school, now swarming with ambulances and police cars, and waited for 45 minutes behind police barricades. They then were told to go to a staging area nearby where they waited nine hours to find out if both their sons were safe.

"The first bus came, and Ray (Anthony) got off that bus. I was a little relieved when he got off the bus," Mr. Shoels said. "But I knew that Isaiah wasn't coming back at that time because if you know Isaiah, he would have never made me and his mother worry like that at all. Never. Because of the area we stay in. I knew then he was gone, but I was still in denial."

Mrs. Shoels admitted to JET that when they arrived at the school about 12:30 p.m., she already knew her son's fate.

"I just had that instinct, that mother's instinct, that he was already gone," she said.

In hindsight, Mr. Shoels regrets there were warning signs about the Trench Coat Mafia that went unheeded.

"They (his children) constantly talked about them," he said. "Last year he (Isaiah) had a confrontation with one of them. That's when he was telling me they targeted Black kids.

"My 15-year-old daughter had a confrontation with some other little White girl. They were calling them niggers and kind of cursing them out, and my daughter didn't take it and we got called up to the school because they said my daughter and a White girl were calling each other prejudiced names. That was the only time we really conflicted with the school about that," he said.

"You know I'm not a petty person. My kids, I taught them not to be prejudiced and we thought they were strong enough to get out of this mess," he said. "Now I wish I had investigated this. Now you see what I am trying to tell these parents."

Finally, Shoels recalls that even Isaiah possibly had a premonition of his death. "My son told me and my wife, `Daddy, what would you do if someone gunned us down?' Me and my wife asked him why he was talking like that. He said, `I'm just asking you a hypothetical question. What would you all do if someone gunned us down; would you gun them down?' And, `would we go kill them?' I said, `No son, you can't fight hate with hate. But if you or any one of your other siblings get killed over foul play, whatever that foul play was, I will fight it until the day I die.' And it just so happened to be racism and hate and I mean that, I'm going to fight it until the day I die."

At JET press time the family was preparing for Isaiah's funeral, and the Rev. Patrick Demmer, pastor of Denver's Graham Memorial Church of God in Christ, who has known Isaiah since birth, told JET: "When Isaiah was born, I held him in my arms and prayed for him because he was born with a hole in his heart. It's devastating for me to see a young man who God had delivered to be taken in such a tragic act."

Mr. Shoels said the thought of their son is what will bring them through the traumatic days ahead.

"We're going to be strong for him. I know for sure he wouldn't want us to wither away and break down. He would want us to stand strong and push this thing. I know he would want us to take his death and turn something positive into it, and that's what I'm going to do."

COPYRIGHT 1999 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning