Colorado School Gunman Identified

Why did Dwayne R. Morrison enter a Bailey, Colorado, high school classroom Wednesday, and took six female students hostage before killing himself and one of the girls?

"He was just an old guy who came on a mission, and I think he got what he wanted," 16-year-old male student Cassidy Grigg said while making the rounds of the television talk shows Thursday.

"I think he just went because he knew he wasn't going to come out alive," Grigg said on CBS News' The Early Show.

Other than that, not much is known yet about Morrison, 53. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and a backpack. He was living in his vehicle, Sheriff Fred Wegener said Thursday morning, but had a Denver address. Morrison had no known connections to the Bailey area.

"The motive at this time still remains a mystery," Wegener said.

At first, Morrison talked directly to hostage negotiators. Then he would communicate only through his six hostages, and then, after he had released four of them, he stopped talking at all.

Wegener defended his decision to have the SWAT team storm the Platte Canyon High School classroom.

"My decision was to wait and possibly have 2 dead hostages," the sheriff said. "We have confirmed he did traumatize and assault our children," and Wegener said the assaults were "sexual in nature."

Based on that information, "This is why I made the decision I did, we had to go save them."

Morrison shot one of the hostages, Emily Keyes, 16, in the head, then killed himself. Keyes later died at a hospital.

"Being a sheriff in a small community, knowing all the parents, knowing the kids — my daughter graduated last year, my son's a junior here — it is very difficult. Because I'd want whoever was in my position to do the same thing. And that is to save lives," he said.

Many of the first responders at Platte Canyon were also the first on the scene six years ago at Columbine. Law enforcement in this tiny mountain town refuse to discuss a motive but say although they'd trained for this kind of thing they never expect it to play out in their tight-knit community.

"I was just praying that we would do the right thing," said Wegener, who himself had a son in the school.

"Any time their's a school shooting, most Americans recall the horror of Columbine. That's true in this community less than 40 miles away," said CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers, who covered the 1999 school shooting as well.

"The images are similar, frantic parents waiting for word on their kids," Bowers said. "You may remember in Columbine, law enforcement were criticized for not storming the school sooner. That may be with why they took action earlier this time."

When the gunman came into the classroom, one of the male students, Cassidy Grigg, asked to remain with the girls but the man would not allow it.

"He came in the room with a gun and shot the gun on the ground and said 'Get up on the (black)board or I'm going to shoot you," Grigg said on CBS News' The Early Show. "He went one by one and told us, hey, you could stay in the room, or you could leave. And he got to me and I told him that I didn't want to go, that I wanted to stay. And the reason I wanted to stay was because the girls were in the room."

His mother Larina told the Rocky Mountain News her son was given an ultimatum.

"The gunman swung around, put the gun right in his face and said, 'You need to leave.'"

Larina Grigg told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith she knows the mother of the girl who was killed.

"It's a very empty feeling this morning. Definitely many, many prayers are with the family. I spent lots of time on my knees for the family already this morning," she said.

Throughout the ordeal, parents of the school district's 770 students were beside themselves, reports Bowers. Police barricades blocked access to all four local schools, and frantic calls to their kids weren't getting through.

"We've tried using the cell phone but obviously the cell phone must have been turned off," said parent Jill Lovall.

A text message from Bill Twyford's 15-year-old son did get through, but it offered little reassurance.

"It says hey there's a gun hijacking in our school. I'm fine — bad situation though," Twyford said.

The Platte Canyon high school was closed Thursday and will be closed Friday.

"We are a community in mourning," schools superintendent Jim Walpole said. "Our thoughts, our prayers are with our students, staff and their families. Especially the family of the student we lost."

Emily Keyes is shown in a yearbook photo as a smiling blonde who played volleyball and was on the debate team at Platte Canyon High School. There was no known link between Keyes and the gunman, who was not identified by authorities.

"I don't know why he wanted to do this," Wegener said, his voice breaking. He himself had a son in the school as the drama unfolded.

The situation unfolded in a narrow, winding canyon carved by the South Platte River about 35 miles southwest of Denver. Ambulances were parked in the end zone of the football field, and a tank-like SWAT team vehicle was parked nearby on a closed-down highway swamped with gun-toting sheriff's officers and police.