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 hearing gunshots outside his classroom at Arapahoe HS.
“That morning, I didn’t really tell my family I loved them,’’ Bowers, 17, 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 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 a female student in the head, critically wounding her, before fatally shooting himself.
It’s unclear why Pierson fired at the girl — authorities said he had been targeting his former debate coach, Tracy Murphy.
Pierson had been kicked off the debate team and suspended from school in September for a few weeks after a dispute with Murphy.
The attack occurred just 8 miles from Columbine HS, where a dozen students and a teacher were killed in a 1999 bloodbath, and on the eve of the Newtown massacre’s first anniversary, when 20 students and six adults were killed.
Bowers recalled the terror that hit his classroom when the gunfire erupted at his own school.
“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.
“In seconds, our teacher locked the door and whipped the lights off. I heard another couple shots, screaming, and somebody’s voice shouting threats.
“All I could do was sit there and pray to God.”