could find my Dad. I knew I hadn't seen him for a while, and for all I knew Mr. Young either had him at gunpoint or had maybe even killed him. In the process of looking for Dad I walked past my two brothers who were still living at home about three times before I finally started to talk to them so they would recognize me. My Mom only recognized me by my teeth which had braces at the time, because the black smoke that burning gasoline emits had partially stained my clothes, and had totally turned my skin and hair black. My Mom took me home to get cleaned off and calm down. Dad came home for a couple minutes to see me while I was cleaning up, but had to go back out to talk to the press and police, and answer questions. After I finally got all the black scrubbed off, my brother Rick, 19, told me to get ready to go to Kemmerer to the hospital. I didn't want to go, so he went with me. I had to get stitches in my elbow for an incision from a flying bullet shell fragment, and they wanted to check me for smoke inhalation. I hadn't inhaled a lot of smoke because of my towel, so I got to come home. Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. Excell. STATEMENT OF MAX T. EXCELL, FATHER AND PRINCIPAL, COKEVILLE, WY Mr. EXCELL. The thing that's kind of interesting to me about this whole situation is that it happened in a small town in Wyoming. Cokeville, WY, has a population of about 450 people. The surrounding county about doubles that population. So, our attendance area has around 900 people total. Our elementary school has 150, and on that day the morning kindergarten had gone home, so we had 136 students in the building, along with 18 other people, all of which were adults except one preschooler who was there-his mother had brought a kindergarten child and that child was with them. It points out to me that violence can happen everywhere. The thing of most interest to me is that in Cokeville, WY, we feel like we're very safe. We found out that we were not that safe, although we haven't made a lot of changes; we've made a few. We're a little bit more interested in questioning people when they come into the school. Our police officer in town, if he sees a strange car around the school, he'll come and check and find out what's happening there. We believe in a very open school concept. In a small town you about have to. It's a little difficult to look your neighbor in the eye and say, "We can't let you in the school today. We have our doors locked. We have a policeman at the door." No, we don't do that. We know that if someone wanted to get into the building, they'd get into the building whether we had a policeman there or whether they had the doors locked, but in our small town we feel like we need to have that open concept where students can learn without feeling like they're behind prison bars locked up and only able to learn by force. I wasn't in the building at the time that we were taken hostage. I was at the post office down the street, returned 10 minutes later, and found them already in the classroom. Some of the demands that David Young had were that he be heard by the Government. That was his greatest demand, and he wanted to use us as hostages, as pressure to be able to do that. He also wanted to have $2 million for each person in the school. That's not very easy to raise in Cokeville, WY. We discovered later this man had brought journals, diaries with him. He didn't intend to leave that school alive; I'm quite sure of that. According to his journals, this was a man who believed in reincarnation and he believed that in his next life he could take this $3 million-plus, his wife-this $300 million, excuse me—his wife, himself, and those students who would be killed and would set up a brave new world, he called it. It was more scary after the fact than it was during it because we found out what he really intended. We have been believers in miracles happening in the modern day. We feel like this was one of them. In the bomb there were seven blasting caps along with shrapnel and other material which combined would make nitroglycerin. Only one blasting cap worked; the rest were found in the bomb by the bomb squad after the deto nation a couple of days later. We believe in a miracle that happened that day in Cokeville, WY. If you have any questions, anything, I'd be glad to answer them for you. Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you. We will get to questions when we're finished with the entire panel. [The prepared statement of Mr. Excell follows:] COKEVILLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL HOSTAGE CRISIS 16 MAY 1986 Submitted by Max T. Excell, Principal The town of Cokeville, Wyoming has a population of approximately 450 people with about that many in the surrounding county area. Our mail service is a post office where we pick up our mail from a post office box. At about 1:35 PM on 16 May 1986, I returned from picking up the school's mail, entered the back door of the school, and met the custodian there. He stated that the fifth grade band students in the music room were being very noisy, that he had quieted them down once, and that the music teacher wasn't there. I said, "That's not like their teacher, I'}} go find him." I took the mail to the office and started down the hallway looking for the band teacher. No one was around until I noticed the door to room four was open. I approached the door and discovered that a lot of students and teachers were in there. My first thought was that I hadn't authorized any kind of assembly or demonstration today. I wondered what they were doing. Our acting principal motioned me back away from the door, like he didn't want me to enter. I turned and walked away, probably about ten feet, then I thought, "What in the world does he not want me in there for?" As ! turned, a woman walked up behind me with some students she ́d won't listen to me. Well, that made me feel like I wasn't worth much. Apparently David and Doris Young had entered the building at about 1:20 to 1:25 PM. He walked up to my receptionist. She said, "May I help you?" He said, "Yes," and just stood there. She said, "How may I help you?" He said, "This is a revolution and you're being taken hostage." She said, "Sure I am." He said, "I have a bomb right here in this cart and if you don't cooperate, it will blow up. The lives of everyone in this school depends on you." So he took her down the hallway looking for a room that would serve his purpose best; to occupy that room and bring all the people in the school into that room. He chose room four. As I began to question him about his demand to be heard, I asked if that was his only demand. He said that he was demanding $2 million each for every person in the room. That would be $308 million because we had 154 people in the room. The room is 30 feet square, 900 square foot. It was bullt to accommodate 38 studenta. We lied 136 ludente, (morning kindergarten had gone home) ten teachers, one student teacher, one substitute teacher, two teacher's aldes, one teacher candidate, one UPS delivery lady, parent, and one preschooler. We talked about various unimportant things while his wife was out of the room clearing the building, bringing all of the classes into this room, some of them at gunpoint. I understand from the one |