For more than three hours Patrick Ireland slowly inched his way across the 50ft distance to the first floor library window.
Dragging himself past classmates slaughtered in the Columbine High School massacre, he knew he had to escape if he had any chance of survival.
Paralysed down his right side and bleeding from three gunshot wounds the 17-year-old drifted in and out of consciousness.
But he did not give up hope. At last he hauled himself up to the window ledge and dropped, not knowing who or what lay on the other side.
“It was the shortest way out,” says Patrick. “My whole right side was paralysed. I felt confident that there’d be someone there to catch me.”
And there was. Patrick became known as the “Boy in the Window” to millions who watched live as he fell into the waiting arms of SWAT team officers Donn Kraemer and John Ramoniec.
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It was touch and go whether he would survive. But now, days away from the 20th anniversary of the shootings, the financial adviser speaks to the Mirror after making an extraordinary recovery.
On the morning of April 20, 1999, Patrick was with friends in the library when Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, began their murderous rampage.
The misfits chose the date to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday with a murder spree which left 12 students and a teacher dead.
“We were all shot fairly early on in the library,” Patrick recalls. “We heard their shots and the throwing of pipe bombs as they got closer. It was harrowing.”
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Patrick hid under a table, but when he leaned out to help his wounded friend Makai Hall, he was blasted by Klebold, stood just 15 feet away with a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun.
He was left for dead by Klebold, while Harris picked off others trying to flee.
“After I was shot, I blacked out and was unconscious through most of the mayhem. It was a blessing in disguise. It saved me from a lot of traumatic memories,” says Patrick.
Harris and Klebold planned the attack as a terrorist bombing for more than a year, hoping to kill at least 500. When bomb timers failed to go off, they randomly fired at students for 17 minutes, later killing themselves.
Thinking the school was still under siege, SWAT teams delayed rescue for three hours while victims such as coach Dave Sanders bled to death.
More than once, Patrick also thought about just lying down and waiting for someone to find him.
But when he finally made it over to the light, he felt a warm breeze coming in through the window and knew he was close to safety.
Once he was out of the building, paramedics scrambled to get him to St Anthony’s Central Hospital.
Doctors discovered one of Klebold’s shots had penetrated the left hemisphere of Patrick’s brain, causing right-sided paralysis and severing his brain’s language centre.
He also had a second head wound and his right foot was shattered.
Surgeons saved his life but the hard work began when he was sent to Craig Hospital for rehab.
Over seven months he had therapy to teach him how to walk, talk, read and write again. Thanks to his athletics training, he responded well to the physical aspect. But mentally, it was a different story.
Friends and family would ask him questions, and Patrick would answer them – except what came out of his mouth often made no sense.
His rehab meant going back to the frustrating work of tracing letters and reciting the alphabet.
“It was like elementary school again,” says Patrick, who walks with a limp while his right hand has never fully recovered.
Despite the setbacks, he returned to Columbine for his senior year.
He went on to study business finance at Colorado State University and met his wife on the first day.
Through all of the obstacles, Patrick says he has learned invaluable lessons about perseverance and hard work.
“Those of us who choose to be victors can achieve the goals we set out for ourselves,” he says.
It is a message he has gone on to convey to young people, through public speaking as well as to his own family.
Inspired by her brother’s recovery, sister Maggie went on to study physical therapy and now helps rehabilitate patients at Craig Hospital.
And now, instead of being simply the Boy in the Window, he is known by the much more welcome name “Dad”.
Patrick and wife, Kacie, have daughters, Kennedy, nine and Kensington, four, as well as baby son Keene.
Yet his children are being raised in an America where, despite Patrick’s ordeal, massacres have continued in schools as politicians refuse to enforce stricter gun laws.
Following Columbine, the US has been plagued by deadly violence in classrooms with Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and more recently the Parkland school shootings.
Patrick would not hesitate to send his children to his old school, but he admits he feels the tragedies more keenly now he is a father.
“It has added another level of how serious this is. It’s appalling,” he says.
Despite not calling for an outright ban on guns, Patrick believes there is no place for semi-automatic firearms.
And just weeks after two traumatised pupils who witnessed the Parkland massacre took their lives, he has a message for other survivors.
“You have to believe that tough times don’t last, but tough people do,” Patrick adds.
“I was so determined not to let my shooters win.
“I believe the world is still good at heart. People need to hold on to that.
“Evil will not win. There are too many good people in the world.”
