ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 15, 1996 TAG: 9603150075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DUNBLANE, SCOTLAND
SOURCE: WILLIAM D. MONTALBANO LOS ANGELES TIMES
DUNBLANE, SCOTLAND, GRIEVED Thursday in a blend of anguish, anger and incomprehension over the senseless slaughter of its children.
``I thought I had seen death in all its forms, but I was wrong,'' gray-haired paramedic Thomas Urquhart said Thursday.
``Some of the children were lying in a circle; it looked as if they had been shot while playing a game. The way the dead teacher was lying, it looked as if she was trying to protect the children.''
There is no official reconstruction of Wednesday's slaughter of first-graders at Dunblane Primary School; police are not talking. And mercifully, there are no pictures. But there are indelible impressions among health professionals summoned to horror in a quiet town.
They say Thomas Hamilton began shooting before he reached the gymnasium where 29 children were gathered for an early physical-education period. He shot and wounded teachers Mary Blake and Eileen Harild in the foyer.
Inside the gym, he shot teacher Gwen Mayor and the 5-year-old girl next to her. He shot children in a play circle.
The others ran from the madman who had come to school with four guns. Hamilton chased them, shooting at close range. He shot the last of the children in a clump at the far end of the gym, where they cowered in fear; there was nowhere else to run.
It took two to three minutes. By that time the children were all down, 15 of them were dead, one dying, 12 others wounded.
Then Hamilton blew his own head off.
``He would have done less damage if he had stood at the door firing an automatic weapon. The close range ... all the head wounds ... '' said John McEwan, manager of district ambulances services, in an interview Thursday.
``I'll never in a million years believe what I have just seen,'' McEwan said.
Dunblane grieved in a blend of anguish, anger and incomprehension Thursday. Victoria, Emma, Brett, John, Hannah, Melissa, Charlotte, Kevin, Ross, David, Mhairi, Abigal, Emily, Joanna, Sophie, Megan - the names echoed across the village and around a nation in mourning. ``A silent scream,'' one politician called it.
``Evil visited us yesterday and we don't know why. We don't understand it, and I guess we never will,'' said Ron Taylor, principal of the 700-student public school in this upscale village of 7,300 in the center of Scotland. Of the 29 students, one boy was uninjured; he may have been protected by the bodies of two dead friends.
As a snow shower sprinkled a school besieged Thursday by battalions of photographers and reporters, the pain was too much for some.
``Have you no heart? Leave us alone!'' screamed a red-headed teen-ager as she fought her way through a clutter of cameras to lay a bunch of flowers outside the school gates.
Today, the prime minister will visit; on Monday, the queen. All day Thursday, the flowers came.
``To give you something to hold in heaven,'' read a card with flowers that were accompanied by a teddy bear.
``Sleep well, baby chicks,'' said another.
``May God take better care of you than this world ever could,'' read one remembrance, from ``all the people in our office who cried for you today.''
There was a stuffed black and white dog with a red collar, grinning big bears, cuddly small bears, a smiling tiger.
There was a candle in a jam jar, and a message carefully printed in a child's hand: ``To my friends. I had great games with you. Bye Bye, Victoria.''
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. Flowers mixed with teddy bears ``to give youby CNBsomething to hold in heaven,'' a card said. 2. (headshot) Hamilton.
3. A recent, but undated, photo shows the class of Dunblane Primary
School, and their teacher, Gwen Mayor.
Sixteen of the children and Mayor were killed by a gunman Wednesday.
Graphic: Map by staff. KEYWORDS: FATALITY