BAILEY, Colo. -- One of six female students at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey who was held hostage died after she was shot in the head by the gunman as the SWAT team moved in to end the four-hour standoff.

Emily Keyes, a 16-year-old junior, died at the hospital at 4:32 p.m.

The gunman was dead at the scene and his body remains inside the school. It appears that he shot himself, Park County authorities said.

"I'm still somewhat shocked that this could happen in a rural county," said Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener, his voice breaking. "I don't know the identity of the gunman at this time. I don't know why he wanted to do this. And hopefully, the investigation will reveal why."

Wegener said there was no known link between the gunman and his victim.

"Unfortunately, I've been here 36 years so I do know the family," Wegener said, whose son was also inside Platte Canyon High School at the time. "The community's probably going to be in shock right now, rightfully so."

The hostage situation started when the gunman walked into the school at about 11:40 a.m., said he had a bomb in a backpack and fired several shots inside a classroom. Six female students in a second-floor English classroom were held hostage as the school went into "code white" and Park County deputies rushed to the scene, evacuating everyone from the building.

Jefferson County SWAT team and bomb team was called in to help. Deputies determined the gunman's location and established verbal contact with him minutes into the incident through the door of the classroom. The suspect initially talked to deputies but later spoke only through the hostages, authorities said.

The gunman released four students one by one, negotiating with authorities through them by telling the students he released to tell deputies of his demands.

"Most of the demands strictly were, they wanted us to back off," Wegener said.

The gunman shielded himself with the hostages -- making it hard for the SWAT teams -- and talked only through the teens, either directly -- by having them yell through the door -- or by cell phone.

These sporadic negotiations continued until four hours later, when he set a 4 p.m. deadline, broke off all communication, and kept two students with him, authorities said.

"It was then decided that a tactical solution needed to be done in an effort to save the two hostages that were in the room," Wegener said.

At about 3:30 p.m., the SWAT team deployed shock grenades to force their way in.

"Officers breached the classroom with explosives. Within seconds, the suspect shot at entering SWAT officers then shot one of the two female hostages and then shot himself. During the gunfire, SWAT officers pulled an additional hostage from the room and she fled the building on foot," Wegener said.

The victim was airlifted to St. Anthony Central Hospital, where medical personnel were still performing CPR on her on the flight deck. She was pronounced dead about an hour later.

The other female hostage in the room was unharmed. She was being interviewed by detectives who are trying to piece together what had happened during the last couple hours -- when there was only three of them in Class No. 206.

Students Spoke To Gunman Before Hostage

Students said the bearded gunman was wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt and a camoflage backpack as he walked around the campus.

Jesse Kirby, a freshman at Platte Canyon High School, said he spoke to the gunman just moments before the hostage crisis.

"He didn't really look like a student, although he did because he was wearing all of our school stuff. But when he turned around and he looked at me, he had long gray hair sticking out of his hoodie. He was wearing his hood up, so it was really hard, and he said, 'Hey.' And I was like, 'Hi.' He asked me what class I was going to. I was like, 'I'm going to English I,' and he said, 'You're lucky,' " said Kirby. "And I was like, 'It's English!' And he was like, 'I loved English.' And I was like, 'I don't.' And there was an awkward silence and then I just went to my class. And then like five minutes later, we heard the big boom."

A female student said moments before, the gunman asked her to go with him to the English college prep class and she declined, saying she had to go to her own class.

Tom Grigg said his 16-year-old son, Cassidy, was in a classroom with 20 other students and their teacher, Mrs. Smith, when the man walked in, fired a gun and began telling some students to leave and others -- all girls -- to stay.

"He stood them up at the blackboard," Grigg said. "He hand-picked the ones he wanted to get out."

The gunman told Cassidy to leave, but Cassidy said he wanted to stay with the girls, Grigg said.

"The guy flipped him around and put the gun in his face and said, 'It would be in your best interest to leave,"' Grigg said.

The gunman was armed with a 9-mm handgun but it's not yet clear if he had an explosive device in his backpack, as he had claimed.

"We have some reports that there are at least one suspicious device that needs to be looked at. And I don't know whether that's inside or outside the school," said Jefferson Sheriff's spokeswoman Jacki Kelley, earlier in the day.

The gunman has not been identified. Authorities are hoping that once they clear the school parking lot and students and staff go to retrieve their vehicles, the gunman's car would still be in the parking lot.

"Until this point, we would consider the gunman to be nothing more than a John Doe, until we take care of some initial things and identify some initial things," said Steve Johnson with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, who is now leading the criminal investigation.

Authorities say they still don't know the gunman's motive for invading the school and taking specifically female students hostage.

"We have almost no information on this suspect. We don't know who is, we don't know what he wants ... We'd like to know what he wants," Kelley had said, earlier in the day.

It's not clear what the man's 4 o'clock deadline pertained to. The gunman said that "something will happen" at 4 p.m.

No School Thursday, Friday As Community Mourns

Friends rushed to St. Anthony Hospital to comfort each other after learning about what happened to Emily.

"She in speech. She's a really good girl. She's always been very nice to people. She's kind of quiet but she would never do anything to anybody to deserve this," said the victim's friend, Jessica Leedom.

Bailey, a small town of about 5,500 people, will be reeling from the tragedy for several days.

"We are such a close community. Forty-three of the students in my kid's class, in 11th grade alone, 43 have been together since first grade," said parent Shelly Jakubiak.

"Tonight we are a community in mourning. Our hearts and prayers are with our students, staff and their families, especially the family of the student we lost," said Platte Canyon District Superintendent Jim Walpole.

Walpole said that Platte Canyon High School and Fitsimmons will be closed the rest of the week.

"The middle and high school buildings are sealed as a crime scene and will be for an undetermined amount of time," Walpole said.

He said Deer Creek Elementary will hold class as planned but that crisis counselors and victims advocates will be available at Deer Creek and also at Platte Canyon Community Church in Bailey for all students, staff and family members.

He said school officials will announce later this week when school will reopen during the week of Oct. 2.

The two schools that are impacted are about four miles west of Bailey, which is in Park County. The two schools have an enrollment of about 770 students, with 460 in the high school.

Entire Campus Evacuated

Platte Canyon and Fitzsimmons Middle School, which is next door, was completely evacuated within the first few hours after the standoff.

At 2 p.m., students from the school complex -- which houses both Fitzsimmons Middle School, Platte Canyon and the school district administration building -- walked to buses parked on a closed portion of U.S. Highway 285, about a mile west of the school. The students apparently evacuated by walking to a fire road behind the school, and then to the buses.

The 12 buses took the students at Deer Creek Elementary School, where many anxious parents waited for them. Students had not been able to call or text-message their parents to what was happening and many were worried. The 1,000 parents who had gathered at the elementary school clapped and cheered as the school buses arrived.

Michael Owens, who has one son at the middle school and another in the high school, said the anxiety was worse because the memory of Columbine was still fresh.

"Things that are out of your control, you just what you can do," he said. "It's like an earthquake."

Bill Twyford said he received a text message from his 15-year-old son Billy, a student at the high school, at about 11:30 a.m. It said: "Hey there, there's a gun hijacking in school right now. I'm fine, bad situation though."

Drill Turned Out To Be Real

Park county authorities first responded to the scene but then asked for help from the Jefferson County Sheriff's SWAT team and bomb squad. The FBI, the ATF, and the CSP all assisted the Park County and Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in the case.

Park County sheriff's deputies, many of whom have family in the school district, responded with their "active-shooter" plan -- an emergency drill prompted by the Columbine tragedy. But first responders and the students learned quickly that this wasn't practice, and that the real deal could be frightening.

"I'll be honest, I was scared to death. Nobody wants anything like this to ever happen to their school. Certainly we trained for it, we've talked about it, and I was just praying that we do the right thing," Wegener said.

"We were in there for about half an hour and the policeman came in and he said, 'Don't panic, the shooter's in the next room.' And then everyone, right then, started crying," said freshman Jackie Mace, who was several classrooms away. "Once we got out of the classroom, the policeman said, 'Hands on your head. And we went out there, screaming, thinking that the shooter was out there, so we went back into the classroom. I heard kids were against the chalkboard, he was putting guns against their heads, asking their names, and supposedly smelling them or telling them something. And I think that he shot the gun against the wall just to scare them."

"The Colorado Bureau of Investigation and all of their available resources will be used to conduct the criminal, ongoing investigation into this tragic event. We are in the very early stages of this criminal investigation. There is not a lot of information that can be released," said CBI's Steve Johnson. "We will be taking steps to assure that our investigation is thorough, prompt, and that we leave, obviously, no stone unturned. Our responsibility is to provide this community with the answers into the criminal episode that took place."

"Even though law enforcement agencies train for situations like this one, we never expect it will happen in our own backyard," Wegener said.

U.S. Highway 285, which runs in front of the school, was closed from Bailey to Shawnee. Emergency equipment was parked on the highway in front of the school and Airtracker 7 Pilot Rich Westra said there is a steady stream of emergency equipment coming down the highway from the direction of Denver.

Highway 285 in that area will be closed until noon Thursday, authorities said. Local residents will have access but semitrailers northbound on the highway will be forced to exit at Fairplay, southbound at Morrison.

The high school football field, across the highway from the school complex, was used as a staging area for ambulances and emergency personnel. A Flight For Life chopper landed on the football field and was later used for Emily.

Nearby Schools Locked Down

At the beginning of the hostage situation, six nearby Jefferson County schools were locked down in the Conifer area as a precaution. The schools that were impacted include Conifer High School, Elk Creek Elementary, West Jefferson Middle School, West Jefferson Elementary and Deer Creek Elementary. Schools in Fairplay, Colo., about 30 miles away, were also locked down.

The lockdown was lifted when the threat appeared isolated. Students at all of those schools were released at their normally scheduled time.

The lines of students fleeing the high school and a nearby middle school, and the frantic parents scrambling to find their loved ones, reminded many of the scene at Columbine High School in 1999, where two students killed 13 people before taking their own lives. The suburban Denver high school is less than an hour's drive from Bailey, a small town of about 5,500 people.