Thursday 15 February 2017 – Valentine’s Day massacre at Florida high school

This post may be updated in the coming days…

According to Everytown for Gun Safety the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida yesterday was at least the 18th reported school shooting in the United States this year – that’s more than two a week, with six of those incidents resulting in deaths or injuries. Since 2013, according to the same source, there have been 291 reported school shootings in America, which is about one a week! Yesterday’s shooting was the most deadly since 26 were killed by Adam Lanza at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. Yesterday’s attack, which claimed at least 17 lives began outside the school where the suspect killed three people before entering the school to continue his rampage, killing another 12 with a further two dying from their injuries in hospital. At least six people remain in hospital, three of whom are in a critical condition. The suspect fled the scene but was arrested later and is being reported as being an expelled student, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz.

Cruz (pictured) is said to have set a fire alarm at the school before setting on his killing spree. This seemingly caused confusion with some students believing it was a drill as there had been a fire drill earlier in the morning. However, it became quickly clear that it wasn’t and students and teachers responded by hiding or fleeing. The school had undergone training for such a situation and a “Code Red” was issued and the school was shutdown with teachers locking down individual classrooms. Police and Swat teams descended on the school and, in what is a common and well tried system, began evacuating the students and staff from the school while also searching for the suspect. Cruz had already fled the scene and was detained without incident at Coral Springs, a nearby time, around an hour after he left the school.

Cruz is said to have been expelled for “disciplinary reasons” and although authorities have given no more details at this stage a student at the school, Victoria Olvera, told the Associated Press that he had been kicked out of school because of a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. Ms Olvera also claimed that Cruz was abusive towards his ex-girlfriend. In what seems a very familiar scenario, neighbours and friends of Cruz spoke of his liking for shooting at chickens and his talk about shooting animals including lizards, squirrels and frogs. Authorities are already examining his social media activities. The photo of Cruz above trying to look badass with a handgun was taken from his now-deleted Instagram account. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said: “We have already begun to dissect his websites and things on social media that he was on and some of the things … are very, very disturbing.” Sheriff Israel later tweeted of the shooting: “It’s catastrophic. There really are no words.”

Something else that has become a familiar feature of school shootings in the United States is the unwillingness to talk about gun control in the immediate aftermath. Politicians deflect talk of gun control claiming this isn’t the time for such conversations. In reality they are simply trying not to talk about it at any time and they continue to pedal the crazy assertion that guns don’t kill people, people do and that there is no need for gun control and even that more guns is the answer! We come back to the same arguments every time there is a major school shooting in the United States, and I’ve written about several in my blog in the last three years. Nothing changes and quite frankly America’s attitude to gun control has made your country a laughing stock around the civilised world – and yes, I do believe that on gun control, healthcare, and so many other areas of society, America is far from being a civilised country.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS AND REACTIONS

Student Bailey Vosberg: “I heard what sounded like fireworks and I looked at my friend and he asked me if I heard that. Immediately, I knew. I didn’t say anything to him, I just hopped over the fence and I went straight to the road that our school is located on – and as I got there there was just Swat cars and police units, police vehicles just flying by, helicopters over the top of us.”

Caesar Figueroa, a parent said his daughter hid in a closet in the school and rang him to tell him not to try and call her as she didn’t want to be heard by the gunman. Mr Figueroa said: “It’s the worst nightmare not hearing from my daughter for 20 minutes, it was the longest 20 minutes of my life.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, on Twitter: “Just finished update from fed authorities on #FloridaSchoolShooting. It is clear attack was designed & executed to maximise loss of life.” Senator Rubio joined those immediately distancing themselves from the inevitable calls for gun control that will follow the shooting. He spoke to Fox News, saying: “You should know the facts about the incident before you run out and prescribe some law that you claim could have prevented it.”

Florida Governor Rick Scott joined Senator Rubio in deflecting talk of gun control: “There’s a time to continue to have these conversations about how through law enforcement … we must make sure people are safe.” Governor Scott called the attacks “pure evil” – which, of course, is another way of dismissing gun control. If someone is evil then that distracts from apportioning blame to the lack of gun control – he’s evil and was going to kill someone regardless. By today, however, Governor Scott was sounding more in favour of action once the mental health of the gunman was clear: “How do we make sure that individuals with mental illness never touch a gun? The violence has to stop. We cannot lose another child in this country to violence in a school.”

President Donald Trump on Twitter: “My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.”

Congressman Ted Deutch, the local district representative: “I’m sick about this news from Florida. Just spoke with the sheriff. This is devastating.”

Senator Chris Murphy, whose district includes the location of Sandy Hook Elementary School, speaking on the floor of the Senate: “As we speak there is a horrific scene playing out at a high school in south Florida. If you turn on your television right now you’re gonna see scenes of children running for their lives in what looks to be the 19th school shooting in this country and we have not even hit March. […] This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America. This epidemic of mass slaughter. This scourge of school shooting after school shooting. It only happens here not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction. We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else. As a parent it scares me to death that this society doesn’t take seriously the safety of my children and it seems like a lot of parents in south Florida are gonna be asking that same question today. We pray for the families, for victims. We hope for the best.”

David Hogg, student at the school: “We instinctively walked outside [on hearing the fire alarm]. We thought it was a drill. A very heroic janitor stopped us. He said don’t go that way – he [the shooter] is over there.” Teacher Ashley Kurth ushered them into a classroom: “Within 30 seconds she easily had 30 to 40 people in there.” Mr Hogg said that people were relatively calm, that the lights were turned off and they were given water and that news of the shooting began to come through on their phones. Mr Hogg’s sister is also at the school: “I knew she was alive – at least in the beginning. I had a text from her, and a call. She was very frantic. I was petrified but I knew she was on the other side of the school. […] There was a group energy that kept us strong. There was a melancholy calm.” Mr Hogg is a student journalist and began interviewing people: “I figured, if I died, at least [the recording] would be passed on to other people, so these voices would echo on. I realised I may not survive. It was going through everybody’s minds at some point.” After about an hour the Swat team burst into the classroom: “At this time, they hadn’t eradicated the suspect. We didn’t know that, but they didn’t have him. We were quite frankly running for our lives.” He found his sister. One of her friends had died and Mr Hogg said he felt “shock – pure shellshock. I had a mix of anger, sadness, but mostly passion. I don’t want this to ever happen to anyone else again. The fact that there are 17 families that now have empty rooms. These are people’s kids. They’ve poured all the love, everything they could ever get, into those kids. And it’s all been taken by one piece of metal, and bled out onto the floor.”

Student Michael Katz, speaking to ABC News: “I heard frantic screaming. I’ve never heard such loud screams in my life. Then we realised there was a shooting at my school.”

Student Matthew Walker, speaking to ABC News: “He was just going from class to class, just shooting at random kids. When the police were escorting me out of the building, there was a dead guy … on the floor next to me. I’m blessed to be alive.”

Student Jeiella Dodoo: “The alarm went off so we had to evacuate from our classes. Then we heard gunshots. I heard about six gunshots and then some people started running and then everyone started running because we were like, ‘If it’s real, then just run’.”

Jeremiah Baez, a student, speaking to The Guardian: “I heard three gunshots. And then some more down the corridor. We shut our classroom door and stood to the side of it so we wouldn’t be seen. It was terrified. There were teachers pulling us in and telling us to get in the rooms and be quiet.”

Teacher Melissa Falkowski, speaking to CNN: “It was the end of the school day and the fire alarm went off, and we went to evacuate as if it was a fire drill. [The school] could not have been more prepared for this situation. We have trained the kids for what to do … We did everything that we were supposed to do. I feel today like our government, our country, has failed us and failed our kids and didn’t keep us safe.”

Student Masiel Baluja, speaking to CNN: “That’s when me and a group of people ran downstairs, and I could tell [the shooter] was on my left side because that’s where I heard the gunshots from, and it was very loud. And then I went to make a right, and I just ran. I was with a group of kids. I didn’t know if any of them them were shooters or not. I felt very uncomfortable because anybody could be a shooter.”

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel: “It’s a horrific, horrific day. My triplets attended this school, and it’s horrible, just horrible. […] This is a terrible day for Parkland, Broward County, the state of Florida and the United States.”

Broward County Superintendent of Schools, Robert Runcie: “It’s a day you pray every day will never have to see. It is in front of us, and I ask the community for their prayers and support for these children and their families.”

Senator Bill Nelson, speaking to reporters: “[The shooter] went and set off the fire alarm so the kids would come pouring out of the classrooms into the hall. And then the carnage began.”

Unnamed student: “He was taunting us, going ‘hey, hey’, screaming at us like he wanted to get us out. But we wouldn’t.”

Derval Walton, student, speaking to the Orlando Sentinel: “Kids were falling in the grass.”

Hunger Games actress Elizabeth Banks, tweeted an image of the words thoughts and prayers crossed out and the the words policy and change written below. It is of course common for many to offer their thoughts and prayers after a shooting but, as Ms Banks is expressing this doesn’t do anything to prevent these shootings from happening again.

This message was backed up by actor Mark Ruffalo who, on Twitter, wrote: “Prayers without accordant action are silent lies told oneself, head by no God, accounting to nothing. Action is the language of truth, the prayers of the Saints.”

Author Stephen King joined the debate on Twitter: “Broward school shooting – There will be prayers from Blabbermouth Don, Pence the Grinch, and their rightwing cohorts. There will be no call for any sort of sane gun regs.”

Kim Kardashian, again on Twitter, wrote: “We owe it to our children and our teachers to keep them safe while at school. Prayers won’t do this: action will. Congress, please do your job and protect Americans from senseless gun violence.” Ms Kardashian’s tweet has already been shared over 27,000 times.

Igor Volsky, a vice president of the Center for American Progress and the deputy director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, tweeted a photo of an AR-15 rifle which was used in the shooting in Florida yesterday with the caption: “Parkland school shooting: AR-15. Texas church shooting: AR-15. Las Vegas shooting: AR-15. Orlando nightclub shooting: AR-15. Sandy Hook shooting: AR-15. NO CIVILIAN SHOULD HAVE ACCESS TO ASSAULT WEAPONS. THEY ARE KILLING OUR CHILDREN.”

Actress Patricia Arquette, on Twitter: “If people can blame drug dealers for the drug problem then we can blame the @NRA for the mass shooting problem.”

Tomi Lahren, a conservative political commentator who works for the pro-Trump Great America Alliance, tweeted: “Can the Left let the families grieve for even 24 hours before they push their anti-gun and anti-gunowner agenda? My goodness. This isn’t about a gun it’s about another lunatic.” Yes. Mr Lahren, it is about another lunatic, a lunatic who had been able to buy legally an assault rifle despite seemingly having a history of violence.

Family doctor John Crescitelli, whose daughter attends the school: “These school shootings have to stop. This is crazy. My son’s football coach died. It’s horrible. It’s like Columbine across the street from my house. I don’t want to get into a gun debate. I really don’t. What are you going to do? Confiscate everybody’s guns? We have millions and millions of weapons … I’m a gun owner. I don’t want the Government taking my gun.”

Parent Michael Irwin: “All the regulation in the world wouldn’t have prevented necessarily what happened today. It’s something that’s tragic, but what regulation can you pass that takes away the guns that are already out there?”

Student Chad Williams, talking to Reuters about Nikolas Cruz (above): “[He was] crazy about guns. He was kind of an outcast. He didn’t have many friends.” Also speaking about Cruz, teacher Jim Gard said: “There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.” Mr Gard also told the Miami Herald that teachers had been sent an email warning them about Cruz’s threats. Cruz’s Instagram account was reported as showing images of knives and guns, boxes of ammunition and numerous rifles spread on a bed. Several images showed a masked man holding knives up to the camera.

Other students have described him as “weird,” “a loner” and that “everyone predicted [he would] do something”. Student Dakota Mutchler said of Cruz that he had started “progressively getting a little more weird, and I kind of cut off from him. Everyone in the school that knew him speculated about him. When someone’s expelled, you don’t really expect them to come back … if they’re expelled, they’re gone. But of course, he came back.” Student Victoria Olvera said “he just changed” and another student told CNN: “All the kids joked … saying he was the one that screwed up at school, but it turns out everyone predicted it. That’s crazy.”

Cruz himself said in a comment on YouTube: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” This video was flagged to law enforcement in September and deleted by YouTube. The video was posted by Ben Bennight – who alerted the FBI. He told Buzzfeed News that the FBI interviewed him asking him if he knew anything about Cruz. The FBI had reportedly interviewed Mr Bennight again since yesterday’s shooting and following Cruz’s arrest (below).

Despite all these comments and clues about Cruz’s temperament authorities say they had no indication that the shooting would happen. The Broward Superintendent of Schools, Robert Runcie, said: “We didn’t have any warnings, there weren’t any police calls or threats that we know of, that were made.” Lawyer Jim Lewis, who is representing the family with which Cruz had been staying with, also said there were no signs of a planned attack: “This young man’s father … died some time ago, his adopted father. His adopted mother – the only mother he ever knew – died November of last year. And it just wasn’t working out where he was living, so he came to live with this family and he’s been there for about 90 days and was working at a Dollar Store, was going to an adult education in order to get his schooling up. And his family, other than being a little depressed because of the mother situation seemed absolutely normal.”

Even President Donald Trump got into the argument over Cruz’s mental health. This morning he tweeted: “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behaviour. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!” This tweet came after Cruz had been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and like tweets in previous shootings may prejudice a trial. It may also complicate matters if Florida pursues the death penalty.

Today the President has addressed the nation (above, watch video) about the shooting yesterday and promised to work with local and state leaders to secure schools and “tackle the difficult issue of mental health.” However, he did not make a direct reference to guns. He said: “No child, no teacher, should ever be in danger in an American School. No parent should ever have to fear for their sons and daughters when they kiss them goodbye in the morning. […] Let us come together as one nation to wipe away tears and strive for a much better tomorrow.” He added: “It is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference. We must actually make that difference.” He also called for people to “Answer hate with love. Answer cruelty with kindness.”

President Trump’s lack of anything to say on gun control echoes other politicians in the last 24 hours who have been trying to focus on the mental health of the gunman. Not everyone, however, is ignoring what is obvious – action on guns in America is needed. Superintendent of Schools Robert Runcie said at a press conference: “Students have been reaching out to me, to staff, to board members … saying now is the time for this country to have a real conversation on sensible gun control laws. Our students are asking for that conversation. I hope we can get it done for this generation. And if we can’t, they will.” Mr Runcie addressed Cruz’s mental health saying that the school had tried to support him when he was still a student: “This is bigger than just the school system. We need a community wide approach to helping our students with challenges and mental health concerns. We need to invest resources, because if we don’t it’s not a question of it, it’s a question of when [it will happen again].”

Sheriff Scott joined the debate: “Today’s not easier than yesterday was. All the victim’s families have been notified,” calling it a daunting challenge but that it was the right thing to do. He added that in the coming weeks “I’m going to be very animated about what I think this country can do [to prevent further tragedies].”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said: “This situation that we’re seeing just cannot continue. We will take such action as we are able to take. We have to reverse these trends that we are seeing in these shootings.” Mr Sessions added: “We are once again, watching the images of children— terrified— streaming out of their school, hands over their heads. It’s image we don’t need to continue to see. When parents, once again, go to sleep fearful that their kids will not be safe when they go to school. It cannot be denied that something dangerous and unhealthy is happening our country.” Fox News tweeted a quote by Mr Sessions: “It’s not good if we’ve got gun laws that say criminals can’t carry guns that never get enforced.” Nikolas Cruz, however, although seemingly mentally disturbed in some way was not a criminal and had purchased the AR-15 rifle used in the shooting legally.

An unnamed mother, whose son was at the school but survived, said of the situation of guns in America: “We can’t let this go on… no more of our children can die anymore. Nothing is going to change. Nothing! Not one thing is going to change because this country has gone bananas!” The woman was speaking to the West Palm Beach News. She added: “My point is, and this is what everyone needs to hear in America what is it going to take to make a change in this country. If they didn’t do it for the four and five year-olds and they’re not doing it for our 14 and 15-year-olds. Who are they going to make this change for?!”

The woman’s son described his experience during the shooting: “What happened was, four students stepped out we heard three gunshots, and we all ran inside. There are two rooms in the theatre room. I went inside one of them, and five minutes passed and our teacher said she wanted everyone in the back room were we were safe. An hour passed… there were 70 kids and there was a book keeping room where the Swat team came and we ran. we just ran… It was scary. It was crazy.”

“The United States suffers from an epidemic of shooting deaths,

which are nearly nonexistent elsewhere. The gun homicide rate in

this country is 49 times higher than in other rich countries.”

– Journal Health Studies, quoted in New York Times.

THE VICTIMS

It is reported that 17 people were taken to hospital. One was the suspect who was briefly treated for an unidentified injury and released to police custody. Two of the patients sadly died of their injuries while three are in stable condition and three in critical condition. The remaining nine have non life-threatening injuries. Emergency medicine director at Broward North medical centre, Igor Nichiporenko, said: “We have preventative trauma, non-preventative trauma, that’s what we do every day.” Speaking of the three patients still in surgery, he added: “They’re going to have successful surgeries, they’re going to recover, they’re going to go home.”

Among the dead was the school’s assistant football coach Aaron Feis (pictured) who is being described as a “hero.” Ms Feis, according to the school’s football team, the MS Douglas Eagles, died when he was shot shielding students from the gunfire. Mr Feis was also the school’s security guard. The school’s football team tweeted news of his death: “It is with great sadness that our Football Family has learned about the death of Aaron Feis. He was our Assistant Football Coach and security guard. He selflessly shielded students from the shooter when he was shot. He died a hero and he will be forever be in our hearts and memories.” Mr Feis was taken to hospital in critical condition but died of his injuries.

You can read more about Mr Feis in this BBC article or about him and the other victims in this BBC article, or in this New York Times article. Some additional links have been added below on Friday 16 February 2018.