A terrified teen who thought he was going to die in last week’s Colorado high-school shooting scribbled a heart-wrenching goodbye to his family on the only thing available at the time — his hand.
Certain of impending death, Matt Bowers fumbled for a pen in his pocket as he cowered in a corner after heading gunshots outside his classroom at Arapahoe High School.
“That morning, I didn’t really tell my family I loved them,’’ Bowers told CNN. So “I wrote, ‘I love you’ on my hand just so that they knew I was thinking about them and I was praying for them.
“It said ‘Family, I love you all so much,’ and I underlined the ‘so much’ because I really meant it.”
He also wrote on the same left hand, “I’m here now” above a cross to tell his kin that he was in heaven.
“That’s where I genuinely thought I was headed if [gunman] Karl [Pierson] happened to stumble into our classroom and actually end it for all of us,” Bowers said.
“Since the shooting, I have been carrying the pen in my pocket the whole time.”
Pierson, 18, shot and critically wounded a female student before he fatally shot himself.
Bowers recalled the terror that hit his classroom when the gunfire erupted.
“In a split second, our class looked at each other with disbelieving eyes, and blood withdrew from my teacher’s face,” he wrote in a blog posting.
“Our entire class bolted to the corner of the classroom, kicking off papers while climbing over desks, as everyone crammed their way as close as they could away from the entrance.
“All I could do was sit there and pray to God.”