By TERRY SPENCER and FREIDA FRISARO (Associated Press)
PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Gunfire erupted once more at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Friday as a part of a reenactment by ballistics consultants of the 2018 bloodbath that left 14 college students and three workers members lifeless.
The reenactment is a part of a lawsuit by the victims’ households and the wounded that accuses the Broward County deputy assigned to the college of failing in his responsibility to guard them and their family members.
Reporters gathered exterior heard photographs simply earlier than midday. Earlier within the day, 9 members of Congress toured the blood-stained and bullet-pocked halls.
Few have been contained in the three-story constructing because the Valentine’s Day 2018 taking pictures. The construction looms over the campus, locked behind a chain-link fence to be used as proof in final yr’s penalty trial for the shooter.
There is damaged glass on the ground, together with wilted roses, deflated balloons and discarded presents. Opened textbooks and laptop computer computer systems stay on college students’ desks — at the very least those who weren’t toppled in the course of the chaos.
In one classroom, there’s an unfinished chess sport one of many slain college students had been enjoying, the items unmoved. The Associated Press was one among 5 media shops allowed to tour the constructing after shooter Nikolas Cruz’s jury went by.
The taking pictures, which sparked a nationwide motion for gun management, traumatized the South Florida group. Cruz, a 24-year-old former Stoneman Douglas pupil, pleaded responsible in 2021 and was sentenced to life in jail.
Not lengthy after the lawmakers left the college, crews introduced tables and ladders inside. Two helicopters hovered overhead. Cameras had been positioned exterior and staff measured numerous distances from a model head on prime of a tripod and a door.
Ballistics consultants had been to fireplace as much as 139 photographs of stay ammunition in the course of the reenactment. The consultants had been firing from the identical spots as Cruz, with an similar AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, and the bullets had been to be caught by a security system. The reenactment was anticipated to take a number of hours.
Technicians exterior the constructing had been recording the sound of the gunfire, searching for to seize what deputy Scot Peterson, heard in the course of the assault.
Peterson, who labored for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and is known as within the lawsuit, mentioned he didn’t hear all of the photographs and couldn’t pinpoint their origin due to echoes. He acquired inside ft of the constructing’s door and drew his gun, however backed away and stood subsequent to an adjoining constructing for 40 minutes, making radio calls. He has mentioned he would have charged into the constructing if he had identified the shooter’s location.
Families of the victims who filed the lawsuit contend Peterson knew Cruz’s location, however retreated out of cowardice and in violation of his responsibility to guard their family members.
Peterson, 60, was acquitted in June of felony baby neglect and different felony prices for failing to behave, the primary U.S. trial of a regulation enforcement officer for conduct throughout an on-campus taking pictures.
The burden of proof is decrease within the civil lawsuit. Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips allowed the reenactment, however made clear she was not ruling on whether or not the recording might be performed at trial. That should be argued later, she mentioned. It is probably going Peterson’s attorneys will oppose the try.
No trial date has been set. The households and wounded are searching for unspecified damages.
Earlier Friday, the U.S. House members spent an hour and 40 minutes strolling the identical path Cruz did in the course of the six-minute assault, accompanied by victims’ relations and prosecutors.
After the tour, the members — six Democrats and three Republicans on the House School Safety and Security Caucus — traveled to a close-by lodge to debate college issues of safety with dad and mom and wives who misplaced family members within the assault. The roundtable assembly was being held in the identical ballroom the place the households realized of their family members’ deaths.
Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Stoneman Douglas graduate whose district contains Parkland, mentioned Congress owes it to the households who’ve misplaced kids, dad and mom and spouses in class shootings to make campuses safer. He mentioned seeing the scene will enable the members to completely grasp what occurred.
“You can read about it all day long, and debate it all day long, but it is not the same as walking through the school,” mentioned Moskowitz, who organized the tour with Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami. Moskowitz identified that Parkland, an upscale suburb of Fort Lauderdale, is taken into account Florida’s most secure metropolis.
“It is now the home of the largest (high) school shooting in our history,” he mentioned.
Parent Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex died within the taking pictures, steered the tour and faculty security roundtable to Moskowitz.
“We can come together and enact common-sense school safety solutions so this will never happen again,” mentioned Schachter, a former insurance coverage dealer who’s now a full-time campus security advocate. “Safety has to come before education — you cannot teach dead kids.”
The constructing is scheduled to be demolished after the tour and taking pictures reenactment. The college is closed for the summer season and no college students or lecturers had been on campus Friday.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”