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When the shooters entered the cafeteria, after the initial volley of shots outside, many of the students and adults sought shelter in the smaller rooms on the west side of the kitchen. Starting with the southernmost room, we have the 1) faculty lounge bathroom(accessible from the faculty lounge only), then 2) the kitchen bathroom, 3) the dishwashing room/mop closet, 4) the kitchen office/storage room, and then, to the east of that, 5) the refigerator and 6) the freezer. A good map is on page .
Jeremy Mullen(3809) hid in the kitchen bathroom along with
Dustin Gorton(3157)
Michael Kish(3454)
Brett Kostalnick(3475)
Fletcher Woolsey(4766)
Julie Anderson(2318 )
and possibly one more unknown person when the group decided to venture out after about 45 minutes. Jeremy apparently decided to see if he could get students hiding in another room to leave with them. According to him, he knocked on the door and left with the others in his group when he couldn't get a response.
"Mullen went to the dishwashing room, banged on the door...and attempted to coax those hiding inside to leave with them."
But the occupants of these rooms remembered it differently:
Matt Depew(2825)
"Matthew stated a fellow student, by the name of Jeremy Mullen, came to the door and began pounding on it "Help, they're after me." They decided not to open the door and let him in because they were afraid of what was going on outside. Matthew stated he didn't know if Jeremy was taken as a hostage and it was a ploy for them to get the door open."
DPO Lietz(on the phone with Depew for virtually the entire time)(2840)
"At one point one of the suspects pretended to be Jeremy and attempted to trick his way in."
Ryan Deathridge(2807)
"Ryan Deathridge said someone knocked on the door where they were hiding and said to them that he needed in because he needed a place to hide."
Shannon Ryan(4267)
"At one point, Ryan told me that a student named Jeremy Mullen tried to get into the room with them, but they would not open the door because they were afraid."
James Stewart(1183)
"...while they were locked in the store room, a Jeremy Mullen knocked on the door to get in. Jeremy was with a Mike Kish." (Which is odd, as Kish himself doesn't say he stayed behind with Mullen.)
Brandi Wiseman(4750)
At about 12:20("one hour after they entered") they barricaded the room on the instructions of police. Jeremy Mullen came to the door at about 12:20 to 12:30pm.
"He ask them to open the door and told them he was going to help them, but they did not open the door because they were afraid it might be the gunmen... In a short time after Jeremy left, there were knocks at the door. She knew it was the gunmen at the door. She said they could hear them reloading their shotguns and other guns in front of the door and then began shooting at what she thought were appliances in the kitchen. She said that she her watch on and that this occured at approximately 1230 hours."

Michelle Huff(3358 )
"...there was one person trying to get in and she doesn't know if it was a student or one of the shooters...that person put a school ID underneath the door to show who they were, but they still did not let this person in, as they didn't know if that was really who was there or not."
This person came back three times trying to get in.
Joel Hatfield(3256)
"Joel stated that someone knocked on the door and wanted to come in. He stated that this person 'slipped his ID under the door which read Jeremy,' but that they did not open the door for him. He stated Paul Andrews still has the ID to date."
Michele and Joel were not in the Depew group, they were in another room, so Jeremy tried to contact people in at least two rooms, not the one that he told the cops about. And almost all of the ear-witnesses said he was trying to get in, not get them out.
Like Mullen, Brett Kostalnick stayed behind while Gorton and the rest of the group made a break for it at about 12:15pm. Like Mullen, he attempted contact with more than one room, showed the occupants his student ID to gain acceptance, and told them(at least initially) he wanted to come in while telling the police he was trying to get the occupants out.
So what was really going on back there in the kitchen? Let us consider several different possible scenarios:
Scenario #1: Mullen and Kostalnick were alone in the kitchen, either trying to get in or get people out. One problem with this is that neither of these two mentions the other in their interviews, though they were in the same place doing the same things at about the same time. Another problem is why they would want to enter these rooms. If they were as threatened as they alleged they could have followed the others out or simply returned to the bathroom whence they came. Plus they spent way too much time out there in the open--knocking on doors, passing ID cards--if the shooters had really been that close at the time.
Scenario #2: Could DPO Lietz have been right when he suggested that the people claiming to be students and passing IDs under doors were really the suspects? Perhaps Mullen and Kostalnick did a quick pass and left(Kostalnick climbed into the ceiling), somehow leaving their IDs behind where the suspects found them. But most of the students thought the two really were who they claimed to be, and neither reported leaving their IDs in the cafeteria. And though rounds were fired in the kitchen, no rounds penetrated the rooms, and no one said the suspects were trying to shoot the locks to the doors they huddled behind. Which suggests that killing these trapped students was not the main purpose for the gunmen in the kitchen. Plus the timeline is a problem, as this scenario had to have happened after about 12:15pm, when the kitchen bathroom group(Gorton, Mullen, Kostalnick,etc.) decided to leave.
And this is the same problem for Scenario #3: That Mullen and/or Kostalnick were taken hostage by the suspects, in an attempt to gain entry to the rooms. Another problem is why the two weren't immediate victms of their captor's wrath when it became clear that no one was going to open any doors. Note also that no where else did suspects make any serious attempt to get at students/faculty behind locked doors, making an attempt to gain entry here in the kitchen at this relatively late time in the siege all the more unlikely.
So let us consider scenario #4: that Mullen and/or Kostalnick were hostages of SWAT itself. I don't mean the first official team that entered the faculty lounge at 1:09pm and began breaching doors in the kitchen at 1:26pm(Governor's Commission, pg 74 of 188 ). I am talking of an unofficial 'clean-up' team, perhaps that early entry team that went in "within 20 minutes"(as the sheriff's office at times claimed). Here's what Dustin Gorton(3158 ) said:
"We heard the police radios after about half an hour(11:50am to 12noon?), I looked out and saw some SWAT officers inside and I decided to stay put for a while." *
*[Gorton revised his ID by the time of the El Paso County investigation, as one of their IOs states:
"He informed me he later learned that the people in the cafeteria he thought were SWAT officers were, in fact, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris." Depending on how you read this, it could also be seen as a sly endorsement of his own origonal ID; because he pointedly did not say his origonal ID was mistaken, only that he later learned.... (in other words, someone-like the cops-told him what he saw!).]
Did Mullen and Kostalnick run into this same group when they tried to leave? And were they then drafted into doing an impromptu reconnaisance of the kitchen-area rooms, the purpose of which was to locate any surviving gunmen in this area, and then to make sure they were not captured alive within the school? For whatever reason, reports of hostages began to emerge:
DPO James Collier(7789)
At 12:20 he hears of hostage/barricade situation. It was right about this time(one hour after the students entered the kitchen office(11:20am + one hour = 12:20pm)), that Brandi Wiseman says that they started barricading the room with sacks of flour and such. Since the cops knew about this from DPO Lietz(as he was in contact with Depew at this time), one wonders if the source of the 'hostage' part of the situation wasn't also Matt Depew, reporting what he thought was going on the other side of the door.
DPO Greg Slater(8640)
"Our rescue team.... began providing cover and assistance in hostage rescues. Those rescues were being initiated from the cafeteria area of Columbine High School."

The trouble with SWAT
The trouble for the people in the dishwashing room and the kitchen office did not end when the 'good guys' finally arrived and evacuated the students and adults (from 1:30 to 2:30pm, by all accounts). {The people in the other two rooms-the faculty lounge bathroom and the kitchen bathroom-had already left by themselves.}
DPO Lietz(9444):
"During the time the SWAT teams were moving in, the mood in the room became very difficult."
Contemporary media accounts do it more justice- they describe a scene of pure panic in the kitchen office, as those inside thought the gunmen had come back. Which is very strange because Lietz gave them plenty of advance forewarning that SWAT was coming in.
Laverne Helm(3296)
Heard shots until about 10 minutes before she was reached by SWAT.
Matt Depew((2839)
"Matthew stated he told Officer Lietz that he was having second thoughts about who was at the door. The SWAT team members than began ramming the door."
James Stewart(1183)
"He heard SWAT officers busting doors."
Why SWAT would take such measures is mysterious. For two hours, they had known through telephonic contact from Depew that there were no suspects in his room(kitchen office). And Brett Kostalnick had at one point accessed the dishwashing room via the ceiling tiles, knew that there were no suspects in that room either, and had probably told this to the police when he ran out.
According to the Final Report,
"One of the SWAT teams, while searching the cafeteria and then the kitchen area, breached two locked doors by firing several rounds into the lock mechanism."
These gunshots, whether shock-locks or not, probably didn't help much, but do they account for all the reports of gunfire even as the 'rescues' were taking place?
Brandi Wiseman(4753)
"They(the Depew group) finally opened the doors and found it was the SWAT team. The SWAT team said that they would escort them from the building, told them to stay down and shut the door(sic). She said that they then heard what she thought was the SWAT team exchange gunfire with the suspects and a yelling at them to get down."
Joyce Jankowski(EP 1-149)(she is hiding in the faculty lounge bathroom)
"She said at one point, she thought the police were in the building, because it sounded like there was a gunfight in the cafeteria."
Adam Kyler(2441)
"They were unsure if the gunfire was from the police or the suspects."
Kent Foncannon(3001)
Heard shots while being escorted from the building by SWAT(after 1:30).
John Curtis(2788 )
"Curtis was in communication with Andy, the campus supervisor. Andy told Curtis that a SWAT team had entered the building.... At one point they saw shadows outside. Whoever it was said it was OK to come out. As Curtis started opening the door, he heard a gun shot."

So the trouble with SWAT here in the kitchen is basically this: there is a disturbingly seemless segueway between the bad guys and good guys. Which seems to be the trouble with the investigation as a whole, now that I think about it.
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"Let the Truth be out, and let the chips fall where they may"

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