Only July 31, 2008, Katrina ran for her life, weaving between trees and high brush; she could hear the loud echoes of the gunshots aimed her way. Her heart hammered against her chest like a bomb that was ready to explode, but Katrina couldn’t stop because that would mean her life would be over.
Katrina Coates, 24 years old, never dreamt she would be caught in the midst of a shooting–a senseless act of violence–but even more than that, she never once imagined that she would witness her best friend shot to death.
Even after running three and a half miles to safety, the nightmare was far from being over. A 17-hour manhunt ensued until the shooter surrendered. A long 9-month trial for justice began at the start of Katrina’s senior year of high school.
Endless hours of emotional and physical agony haunted her. Though the cold-hearted monster was locked away 7 years ago, there is never a day that goes by that Katrina doesn’t think about what happened that fateful day and the lives that were taken. Katrina wants people to know that that terrifying experience has certainly changed, but has not destroyed her life. She is a survivor. This is her story.
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Norway, Michigan, where Katrina spent the majority of her childhood, is a small town where everyone knows their neighbors and feels a sense of safety, but teens often complain that there is little to do to entertain oneself.
The East Kingsford Train Bridge, 10 minutes from Norway, is a local hang-out where, for generations, teens come to swim and jump off the 25-foot platform into the water below. It’s a place where beer is being consumed freely and no one is hassled about their age.
“I’ve been out to the train bridge probably a hundred or so times with my parents and friends while growing up. We were always there–everyone goes there, especially in the summer to swim,” Katrina says, then smiles, “it’s actually illegal to swim there, if you want to get all technical about it.”
The East Kingsford Train Bridge
On July 31, 2008, Katrina, 17, and her best friend since second grade, Tiffany Pohlson, 17, ran into their friend Tony Spigarelli, 18, while shopping in Iron Mountain. Showing off his new Mustang, he asked if they would like to hang out and they made plans to meet up at the train bridge with Tony’s friend, Derek Barnes, 18, later that afternoon.
“Tony was my first boyfriend and my first kiss. He was my first everything, if you know what I’m saying. Tony was a special guy. He literally did not care about anyone’s opinion or thoughts of him and he was incredibly funny. He was the kind of person that would run around naked just because it’s funny.”
That day that she, Tiffany, and Tony went to the train bridge was the first day she had ever met Derek. She described him as being the exact opposite of Tony—totally down to earth, and incredibly laid back.
Katrina and her friends changed into their swimsuits on the Michigan side of the Menominee River and left their clothes and belongings there as well. They needed to get to the Wisconsin side of the river, but Katrina refused to walk across the train bridge barefoot, so she made the decision to swim across and the rest of her friends followed her lead.
What the teens did not know was that in the woods on the Wisconsin side of the river, a gunman in full-camouflage lay in wait with a .308 caliber semi-automatic rifle. He sat still and watched Tiffany, Tony, Katrina, and Derek swam across the river to Wisconsin in order to jump off a large rock overhanging the river, just west of where he waited with his assault rifle.
Walking two-by-two, barefoot, and in swimsuits, Tony and Derek walked in front of the girls and Katrina and Tiffany followed closely behind them. As the group came within 20 feet of the gunman, he jumped out and opened fire, shooting Tony in the middle of his forehead and he died instantly. His body rolled down the hill toward the river.
The three teens ran for their lives, Katrina grabbing Tiffany’s hand tightly. As they fled, the gunman opened fire once more. Tiffany was struck by a bullet to the back of her head, killing her instantly.
“We had run about 15 feet and suddenly she lost grasp of my hand. I thought she had tripped, but then I saw blood in her hair and her face had been shot off–mutilated. At that point, I assumed she was dead and I had to keep running. Later, it was confirmed that she had died instantly, but if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have ever been able to live with myself having left her there. If there had been any sign that she was still alive, I absolutely wouldn’t have left without her.”
After running almost a mile, Katrina eventually reunited with Derek, and together they ran as fast as they could through the bramble and brush, their knees and feet bleeding as the wilderness attacked them in the process.
“I didn’t know if he was following us, and I didn’t know where he was. All I could hear was shots being fired and trees being split-open on impact,” Katrina said. “Finally, we made it to the train bridge after running two miles and we had to make the decision of whether or not to cross it, where the gunman would have a clear shot of us from where he was positioned.”
Katrina paused to light up a cigarette and smiled mischievously, “After running two miles, my lungs were on fire and I remember saying, ‘I swear to God I’m never going to smoke another cigarette again,'” she chuckles, taking a long drag and then exhaling. “At that point, I honestly didn’t want to run anymore. I honestly just wanted to hunker down in a tree or a bush and just hide. I wanted to wait until it was all over. But Derek got down on ground-level with me and he told me, ‘you can’t do that. If you do that, you are going to die. We need to go and I’m not leaving here without you.’ He grabbed my hands and pulled me up off the ground and we ran across that bridge faster than lightning speed, my poor lungs protesting the entire way.”
Derek and Katrina came across two snowmobiling trails–one headed to Aurora, and one that headed to Niagara. Neither of them was sure which path to take.
“Everything I did was purely instinct–a lot of it, I don’t think I thought anything through. We chose to take the Niagara trail to the left. If we would have taken the trail to the right, it would have brought us to the same town that the shooter lived. Looking back, whatever decisions we made, we were just plain lucky.”
After running another mile and a half, Derek and Katrina began searching for a safe place to take cover. The first house they saw was a run down shack with windows boarded up and it looked like nobody was there, so they didn’t bother.
“I don’t remember if I actually said this out loud at the time, but I was thinking ‘You know what? I bet you a million that’s where the bastard lives.’ Of course, it wasn’t, but I don’t make the habit of being stupid, so we ran to the next house.”
The next house they came across had no car in the drive way, which probably meant that no one was home. They became increasingly desperate to find shelter and safety. The last house on that block had a car in the driveway, and Derek and Katrina felt hopeful.
“There was a car in the driveway, so I knew someone was there. But honestly, looking back, if there was no one home, I would have stolen their car and high-tailed my ass-end out of there,” she said. When I asked if she knew how to hot-wire a vehicle, she laughed, “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but everyone in the UP leaves their car keys in the ignition and their front door unlocked.”
The two of them ran up to the front porch, desperately hoping that they would find shelter and safety.
“Derek politely knocked on the door a few times, but I shoved him aside, I just barged my way into the house and yanked Derek inside with me. I locked the door, ran to the patio and locked that door and began pulling down the blinds in every single window that I could find. The couple that owned the house just stared at me.”
Katrina described the couple to be in their 60’s or 70’s. At the moment they had burst into the house, the man was sitting on the couch reading his newspaper and the woman was cooking spaghetti in the kitchen.
“If either of them said anything to me while I was securing the house, I wasn’t listening. But I do remember Derek apologizing over and over. Because, let’s face it, we basically just broke into their house, and I was trailing blood all over the place.”
Katrina’s knees and legs were bleeding from running through the high brush in just her swimsuit. Her feet were all bloody because all the blood vessels on the bottom of her feet were broken from running barefoot on the train tracks. Katrina made the personal decision to call her mom before she called 911.
“When my mom answered the phone, it was the sweetest sound in the whole world. I told her, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing your voice right now.’ She asked what was wrong and I told her everything. I told her that Tiffany and Tony had died and that they were shot. I told her we ran into Wisconsin, but I didn’t know where we were. I said, ‘I don’t know where we are or how to get here, but you need to come here now.'”
While Katrina was making the phone call to her mother, she remembers that the old woman kneeling on the floor beside her, with a bucket of hot water and a washcloth, gently wiping the blood off Katrina’s knees and legs.
Katrina’s mother, Sherilyn Coates, said, “That day when she called to ask me to come get her, I couldn’t believe what had happened. I came as fast as I could, but then I was stopped at a roadblock and prohibited by the police from seeing her until about 5am the next morning. It was so frustrating.”
Next, Katrina called 911 and police told everyone to get in the basement. Derek, Katrina, and the old couple hid in a small cellar in the basement and the police instructed them not to answer the door for anyone who knocks.
“They broke down the front door and came to find us,” Katrina recalls, “They were wearing full SWOT gear, helmets, and were carrying long-range rifles. I definitely wasn’t comfortable with that because I had just seen a gun kill two people. I was absolutely terrified. Even though we were safe, I didn’t feel safe.”
After escorting them to armored SWOT vehicles, the next thing the police wanted to do was to separate Derek and Katrina for interrogation in order to record both sides of their stories. Stubbornly, Katrina refused.
“I told them, ‘No. He’s all I’ve got right now. He’s the one that got me through this crazy thing.’ And they allowed us to stay together, but instructed us not to talk about what happened. So before we were interrogated formally, we weren’t supposed to talk about the shooting or what happened, but we did anyway. I’m not very good at listening to what people tell me to do.”
Around midnight, the police showed Derek and Katrina a picture of the suspect, Scott Johnson, from a yearbook photo taken 20 years ago. Instantly, Katrina declared that was definitely the shooter. Derek, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. When it came to filling out the actual police report, Katrina’s hands were so shaky that she couldn’t write.
“I was so hungry that I couldn’t see straight. I mean, I did run three and a half miles and all. The adrenaline was wearing off by then, so normal body functions were back. I got to pee for the first time in 12 hours. That’s got to be, like, some world record or something.”
Sherilyn, Katrina’s mom, said, “Around 5am in the morning, I was finally allowed to see Katrina. When we got home, Katrina was exhausted to say the least, but she couldn’t sleep. She kept hearing things and had to keep checking the windows and doors again and again to make sure they were locked.”
At 7:30am that same morning, the police called her to say that Scott Johnson had finally come out of the woods and surrendered. After she received the news that the gunman had been taken into custody, Katrina’s friends came over to see her and to provide comfort. Derek was the first to arrive.
“We had a huge pow-wow in the middle of my living room. People brought food and flowers for me. Everyone was sitting around me while I soaked my feet in a bucket of hot water because they were so swollen and painful that I could barely walk.”
The trial did not begin until September; about a month after the shooting had taken place. This was an emotional time for Katrina and Derek, who say they have a connection that goes beyond friendship. They supported one another, validated each others’ thoughts and feelings, and spent a great deal of time with one another.
The trial was one of the hardest parts for Katrina, but it was nothing compared to having experienced the shooting. The court provided a psychologist for Derek and Katrina, but anything they shared with the psychologist during the course of the trial would have become public record, which made Katrina decide to stick to the facts and bury the emotional components. Looking back, Katrina says that it was hard not being able to share the way she felt and express her pain to someone who cares.
“I wasn’t going to talk to the court-appointed psychologist. I said, ‘You don’t care about me and you don’t know anything about me and you will never understand what I have been through. I can spill my guts out to you and what do I get in return? My personal thoughts, feelings, and pain get to be broadcasted to the world. And at the end of the day, you’ll go home, sleep peacefully, and have happy dreams. Well, screw that and screw you.'”
Katrina explains that she experienced extreme PTSD, paranoia, insomnia, nightmares, irrational fears, migraines, and depression. Today, 7 years later, she still has those same symptoms, but she has learned coping mechanisms to help her get through each day.
“It was really hard feeling like I couldn’t tell people what I was going through, especially in the beginning. When I was alone, I would lie in bed with my knees to my chest and just sob. I was just in so much pain–physically and emotionally. It just hurt so badly. And on top of that, I felt an overwhelming burden of guilt. I was constantly thinking that it should have been me and not Tiffany. She was there for me every day and now she wasn’t able to be. She was gone.”
“As a family, we have just tried to be as supportive of Katrina as we can,” her mother said, then takes a deep breath. “The hardest part for me has been the anger towards her from the families of the ones who didn’t make it. People will never understand what Derek and Katrina have been through or what they saw that day. All the attention has always been on the deceased with no consideration to those who survived.”
“Tony’s mom started blaming Katrina for him being there that day and I feel like Tiffany’s family began to feel the same animosity towards Katrina even though it was a group decision to go swimming at the train bridge that day. “ She paused and then added, “It angers me how the families of the deceased want to blame Katrina. I think maybe I could understand it more if it wasn’t my daughter that was being harmed in the process.”
The one aspect of the trial that Katrina remembers most vividly is Scott Johnson’s confession where he explained how he did everything and how afterwards, he kicked Tiffany over with his boot and said, ‘you can quit faking now.’ and saw that she had been shot. He went on to explain that it was no bigger of a deal than spilled milk.
“We were able to tell Scott Johnson anything before he left for prison without him responding. I said that he will never take away my best friend, she’s with me forever, and he can rot in hell for everything he’s done.”
Katrina feels that part of her is glad that she didn’t dwell on the shooting every moment of every day. She explained that if she would have, she probably would be crazy. To keep her sanity, she had to focus on what was ahead of her, including senior year. In previous years, she enjoyed being involved in music, band, chorus, and track. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the activities she once loved, as every day was a constant battle with pain.
Tiffany Ann Pohlson, 17, died tragically in the shooting on Thursday July 31, 2008. Tiffany had many friends, she loved everyone, and was always a delight to be around. She enjoyed babysitting, caring for children, and spending time with her family; she’ll live on in our hearts and our minds, always.
On the first day back to school at the start of senior year, Katrina had Chemistry. She and Tiffany had been lab partners for three years. As soon as Katrina got to their assigned lab table, she began bawling. Written on the table, was ‘KATIFFANY,’ something they etched into the surface a while back, a small memorial of their sisterhood.
“It was then that my chemistry teacher, Mr. Trombley, began going around the room asking people one-by-one how their summer was. My head is on the table, my tears are covering the entire surface of the table and I’m thinking that he’s either going to skip over me and it’s going to be completely obvious I had a shitty-ass summer. Or he is actually going to ask me,” She takes a drag of another cigarette and rolls her eyes in partial disbelief and amusement, “Well, guess what? He asks me. ‘So, Katrina, how was your summer?’ I picked up my head and stared at him. Everyone else in the entire school knows what happened, since we just had a school memorial assembly 15 minutes prior, but he had actually forgotten. I say ‘Are you shitting me?’ and he continues to stare at me with a blank face. I finally slammed my bag on the table, stood up, and said, ‘Go fuck yourself, Trombley!’ And I walked out of the classroom, and that was that.” I asked if anything ever happened after that and she laughs, “Actually, the next day, he asks, ‘Are you in a better mood today, Katrina?’ Like seriously? But after that, he never brought it up again.”
The remainder of senior year was really hard for Katrina. “The teachers treated me like I was damaged goods and most seemed to think that I was messed up in the head,” she recalls. Some of her old friends were hesitant to spend time with her. “I quickly came to realize that you don’t know who your real friends are until they see you go through something like that.”
“After the shooting, I went out to parties for a while. Everyone would stare at me when I showed up because they expected me to be at home bawling my eyes out. In actuality, that is what I wanted to do, but instead I figured that if they are getting drunk, then I would too. It numbed the pain I was feeling and there were a couple times I drank to the point I couldn’t say my own name. I’ve since realized that there are other ways of coping besides drinking.”
When I asked Katrina how the shooting affected her life in general, she paused to think for a while.
“Before the shooting, I was extremely outgoing and boisterous, bordering on annoying. I didn’t care what other people thought and I did what I wanted. All I cared about was hanging out with my friends and having fun. I was more concerned about what my parents would think and less worried about the actual consequences of what I was doing. Now, my priority is my daughter, who is my entire world. Family means a lot to me and I’ve come to realize that friends aren’t just people you hang out with–friends are people you share your life with.”
Sherilyn added, “Before the shooting, Katrina was a straight A student her entire life without ever having to crack open a book. She was always a leader and she had many long term goals for what she wanted in the future. But the shooting changed many things about my daughter. Katrina has deeply internalized the reality that there may not be a tomorrow. She has left her long-term goals behind and lives for today and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it can be sad for a mother to see. She fell in love with a childhood friend and married quickly knowing that tomorrow is not guaranteed. Devon and Katrina were married and have a beautiful little girl who is the light of their lives, though they have divorced since then. She is a wonderful mom and is very strong for having seen what she has, and going through all of this. I’m such a proud momma.”
“You know,” Katrina says thoughtfully, “I used to drink a lot, like, every weekend and sometimes during the week—before the shooting and shortly after the shooting. That’s just what people do in the UP. Now, I have a beer once in a rare blue moon. And actually, on my twenty-first birthday, I spent my night putting my daughter to bed and having a few beers at home. I’m growing up. In fact, I don’t even feel like I’m 24. I feel more like I’m 40.”
When I asked Katrina what kind of wisdom she wants to impart to others, she insisted that after years of turning away reporters, magazines, and television requests, she’s actually ready to share her story and that she wants to provide hope and inspiration to all people, especially those who have survived a traumatic experience. She wants people to know that some things can change your life dramatically, but it doesn’t have to destroy it.
“I plan to go back to school someday, but my ultimate goal in life is to raise a healthy and happy daughter. I’ve learned that you should never pass by an opportunity to let your true friends know how much they mean to you. Tomorrow is never guaranteed, so I think it is important to use kind words and treat everyone with respect. Live like you would die tomorrow and love like your heart can’t be broken,” she smiles and adds, “Life is beautiful if you’re willing to look past the ugly; I hope to pass these life lessons on to my daughter someday.”
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I would like to thank my good friend Katrina for sharing her story with me; many hours were put into putting this article together. I could not have completed it without the many long conversations with Katrina and the support of her family. I feel so blessed to have met her so many years ago; she is the strongest, most courageous, and the most bad-ass person I have ever met. She’s got a whole lot of spunk and sass, and she brings love and light into the lives of everyone around her; she’s the greatest friend and mother anyone could ever ask for. Thank you, Katrina, for allowing me the privilege of helping you to share your story.
Katrina snuggling with her daughter, Madisyn, the pride, light, and joy of her life
Katrina and her mother, Sherilyn, who has always been her closest friend and most trusted ally.
Katrina draws strength from her family: Sherilyn (mother), Lee (father), and Jonathan AKA “Jon-boy” (brother).
On the afternoon of July 31, 2008, three young people lost their lives along the Menominee River near the East Kingsford Train Bridge, which is a popular summer swimming spot. The communities of Iron Mountain, Kingsford and East Kingsford, Michigan and also Niagara and Aurora, Wisconsin will NEVER forget what happened that dreadful night in the Summer of 2008. Rest in Peace, Anthony Spigarelli, Tiffany Pohlson, and Bryan Mort
Through the Lens of Diversity: A Human Experience 