In the Face of Death: Craig Scott Revisits the Columbine Shooting
CBN.com GORDON ROBERTSON: What happened to you? You were in the library under a desk. What did you see? What happened?
CRAIG SCOTT: A teacher ran in yelling that there were two kids outside of the school with guns shooting other kids, and she was screaming at us to get underneath the desks. I got underneath [the desk] with two friends and we heard the gunshots coming from outside of the school, not knowing what was going on. It slowly was becoming more real to us as we were underneath the table and hearing the shots coming into the school and the two shooters getting closer to the library. They came into the library and immediately began to shoot other kids, and they would mock students and make fun of them and laugh. They came over to where I was and saw my friend Isaiah, who was black, and they began to make racial slurs against him. That was the last thing he heard in his life. Then they turned their guns toward my friend Matt. They were both killed. I was lying next to them in complete terror, paralyzed with fear. Soon after, they were over in my area. They left the library, leaving ten students dead in the library and a lot injured.
GORDON ROBERTSON: To me it sounds like people were dying right next to you. Did you ever wonder why you weren't one of the ones that was killed? Have you ever thought that?
CRAIG SCOTT: I believe that God spared my life for a reason. I believe that even on that day He was in control.
GORDON ROBERTSON: Did He speak to you during this time? I hear that you actually heard His voice.
What did He tell you?
CRAIG SCOTT: I was underneath the library [desk], and I heard Him speak to me and say simply to get out of there. Usually, God speaks to me as a small voice or by leading me with the Holy Spirit. But this was more of a voice. It was the most peaceful, understanding voice I have ever heard. I got up and helped rally some of the other students that were still in the library, saying, 'Come on, I think they are gone. Let's get out of here.' We ran out through an emergency exit to safety behind some cop cars out in a field. Soon after we had all gotten out, the two shooters returned to the library. I think that if we had been in there, more of us probably would have been killed.
GORDON ROBERTSON: Your sister Rachel didn't make it out. The report has been that, before she was killed, the shooters mocked her belief in God, that she was targeted specifically by them. Is that true? Is that what happened?
CRAIG SCOTT: Yes. She had a boy that was with her outside the school eating lunch. From his account, they shot from a distance, hitting Rachel three times. They knew Rachel. They had a class with her. They knew she was a Christian, and they began to mock her for her faith saying, 'You still believe in God now?' and things like that. She said she did, and they said, 'Go be with him!' Then she took a fatal shot through her temple.
GORDON ROBERTSON: One of the bullets actually went through a journal she had. There is a bullet hole in it. She had that journal with her. In the journal was a prayer for one of the boys who killed her. What was she praying for?
CRAIG SCOTT: Rachel had a mission in Columbine, and that was to reach out to the unreached. She had that journal as well as another journal in her backpack, which included a powerful drawing that she drew. I believe it was also prophetic.
GORDON ROBERTSON: We have it on the screen right now. It is a flower, a rose.
CRAIG SCOTT: That picture was drawn less than an hour before she was killed. There are 13 teardrops and there were 13 victims that day. When she drew that picture, a friend says she was drawing it in class and wouldn't look up. She then came up to her teacher and showed her the picture. The last thing that she said to the teacher was 'People are going to know who I am some day.' The bell rang and she left class, and that was the last time the teacher ever saw her. That rose that she drew she also drew in another picture growing out of a Columbine flower. God spoke to my dad when he first saw that journal in her backpack, saying that they were not only Rachel's tears, but they were God's tears and they were crying for what happened at Columbine. The rose represented the generation of today and they were growing spiritually from what happened at Columbine.
GORDON ROBERTSON: You have been around the country since the massacre. For me personally when it was going on, watching the news reports and just being shocked, I was thinking, How could this happen? What is going on with our country? Yet you say that God was at work during it and He is using it afterward. How?
CRAIG SCOTT: I have been able to see through. I think God allowed me to see through the tragedy that day and into His invisible hand bringing good from it, a lot of good. So many people have been touched by hearing stories of faith that have come out of Columbine. I have seen thousands of teenagers' lives that have been touched and have wanted to make a change because of Columbine. There have been different things that have risen from it. There are wonderful programs, and I was definitely able to see through evil and to see God bring good from it.
GORDON ROBERTSON: You started something called the American Students' Fund that you are a part of. Can you tell us quickly about that?
CRAIG SCOTT: It is a revolutionary new approach to character education. It is a program that is trying to grab onto the morality that is dwindling in schools. What happens is we go to a school and the students vote on 13 character traits that they feel are important to them. Through four different groups, we try to show those traits in the school and through the greater community.
GORDON ROBERTSON: Craig, I wish I could talk to you more. God bless you.