The day started off like any other for the students and staff of Cokeville Elementary School in Cokeville, Wyoming. No one knew how that day, May 16, 1986, would forever be etched in everyone’s mind.
School started as usual and special events, including a “teddy bear picnic” in the park, had gone as planned that is until noon. A strange woman walked into second grade teachers, Carol Petersen’s, classroom just as Carol had gathered her students into reading groups. The woman began telling Carol there was an emergency in Room 2 and she needed to rally up her kids and go quickly to Room 2. Knowing that was an unusual request to bring the kids towards the emergency and danger, Carol reluctantly did as she was told. Room 2 was a 30 by 30 foot room and seemed to be filled with every teacher and student in the school. Upon arriving to the room, Carol noticed an unkempt man with a shaggy red beard and crazed eyes standing in the middle of the room. If this was not shocking enough, in his hand, there was a gun; fear began to rise up in everyone present. As if one gun was not enough, there were even more piles of guns stockpiled under the blackboard. A shopping cart, like any other shopping cart that you use at a grocery store, was filled with wires and metal along with a string that anchored the man to the shopping cart and the horrors inside it.
This man was not some random stranger to the town of Cokeville; in fact, he had been appointed town marshal. Several years earlier, this man, David Gary Young, who was town marshal, thought of himself as a modern day Wyatt Earp. He went around town with a swagger and a loaded fire arm that he twirled as if it were a cheerleader’s baton. Puffed up with power, he was prone to emotional outbursts and unpredictable behavior, thinking that he was untouchable in his new position. David thought he was invulnerable; however, he was dismissed because of his unconventional behavior. Before leaving town, he married a wannabe singer, Doris Luff, and drove off into the sunset with his new wife. Everyone thought they saw the last of David Gary Young until that day he was standing in Mrs. Mitchell’s Room 2.
Once everyone was gathered in that small room, which was not intended to hold 169 people, David maddeningly shouted, “I am a revolutionary! I am the most wanted man in the country!” He soon made his ransom demands known to the police officers that surrounded the school. The demands were $2 million dollars for each child and a personal phone call from the president. David told all the adults that their lives did not mean anything to him�"their lives were forfeit.
Only for a few lines from David, his wife, Doris, did most of the talking. She told the children, “Someday you’ll be famous for this. You’ll write about it in your journals.” Many of the children described her as having a kindly demeanor, which was strange for one who was associated with a clearly disturbed man.
The fumes from the gasoline that filled the bomb sitting in the shopping cart made many children sick. David refused to let anyone leave the room so the children had to make do with retching into trash bins. As the day progressed, it became apparent to many that David was getting more and more agitated and irrational with the children. All of the teachers were doing their best to keep the children entertained; even Doris tried to get kids interested on the games. She was heard saying, “Think of this as an adventure, something that you can tell your own kids and grandkids about.”
You know how children tend to have short attention spans and many quickly tired of this situation. Some of the children were restless and were inching up towards David’s personal space. As a result of this, David barked at a teacher to cordon off a section of the room where all of the children had to stay. The teacher grabbed some masking tape and created a big square in the middle of the room for where the children were to stay. “Cross this line of death and I’ll start shooting the grown-ups. I’ll shoot everyone if I have to!”
With all of the children crammed into the boundaries of the square, David grew more nervous and decided to take a break and use the restroom. He handed and tied the string leading to the bomb to Doris’ wrist. The day dragged on for everyone involved. Several of the children had been playing quietly on the floor, when they saw something quite unbelievable. An angel described as shiny with white flowing robes told the children, “Don’t be scared. Get up and get to the window. The bomb is about to go off.” Apparently most of the children saw this incredibly beautiful woman, who glowed with an otherworldly light, and did as she asked of them. No one knows if Doris saw the same woman or something else, because something startled her and the bomb went off. Children panicked and screamed. The teachers began evacuating children through the window. Those that saw Doris as the bomb went off described her as a “flaming torch”.
The teachers got all the children out safe and sound. A few of them had minor cuts and burns, but they were alive, thanks to the shining woman in white. David heard the explosion go off and saw his wife up in flames and shot her; then, realizing what he had done, he shot himself. Many people call this a miracle, a divine intervention, a lucky break, and so on and so on. The bomb that David Gary Young had created was designed to blow up the whole school, but only one of the five blasting caps had gone off. This man, this David Gary Young, was known to have a high IQ and knew how to create explosives. It has been a quandary to many why the bomb did not go off as it should have. Later on in the investigation of the bomb, they found that several of the wires had been mysteriously cut? Lucky break or divine intervention? The only two people that died that day had been David and Doris, who had planned on blowing up everyone so that they could be reincarnated into a new world where David would be ruler. Another fact for thought, they were the only two, who had not been inside the cordoned off square. I am not sure if this is pertinent to this story, but a few weeks before this ordeal there was a malfunction of the school’s emergency system. The fire alarm at random times kept going off giving the students plenty of practice to become expert at fire drills. Again, I must ask you lucky break or divine intervention…there are things in this world that we do not always see or understand, but they are there. You must decide for yourselves what you believe.
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