Protection · Cokeville, Wyoming
Divine Intervention at Cokeville Elementary School
On the afternoon of May 16, 1986, former marshal David Young and his wife, Doris Young, took 154 children and adults hostage in Room 4 of Cokeville Elementary School. David Young wheeled in a shopping cart containing a gasoline-based bomb. He demanded $30 million in ransom money and a direct line to President Ronald Reagan.
For three long hours, the hostages were kept in the gasoline-fumed room. The teachers organized prayer circles and read stories to calm the children. The teachers begged for the windows to be opened for much-needed fresh air.
At 3:45 p.m., David Young handed over the string detonator for the bomb to his wife so that he could use the restroom. Doris, holding the string too tight, detonated the bomb, filling the room with black smoke and shrapnel. Teachers immediately started pushing the children out the open windows. Emerging from the bathroom, David Young shot his severely burned wife and then himself.
Despite the blast, all 154 hostages survived.
Over the next weeks, when children began describing their personal experiences to their parents, psychologists, and investigators, many common themes surfaced. Many children reported seeing figures — beautiful people dressed in white — standing between the hostages and the bomb. Some children reported the angelic beings forming a circle around the explosive device to direct the blast upward to the ceiling. Multiple children stated that the beautiful people dressed in white told them to stay close to the windows just before the bomb exploded.
The unfortunate events at Cokeville Elementary School could definitely have had a more tragic ending. But the survivors of Cokeville believed that the divine intervention of the beautiful people dressed in white, those angelic figures, definitely had a hand in saving them that day.