News

Aug 22, 2023

Parkland School Shooting Will Be Reenacted With Live Gunfire Today—Here’s Why

The school shooting that killed 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida will be reenacted Friday with live gunfire in attempts to settle a civil lawsuit against the

The school shooting that killed 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida will be reenacted Friday with live gunfire in attempts to settle a civil lawsuit against the school's resource officer, who said he didn't enter the building to help stop the shooting because he couldn't tell where the shots were coming from.

People sit in front of a photo display of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High ... [+] School during a mass shooting on February 14, 2022 in Pine Trails Park in Parkland, Florida. Photo by Joe Raedle

The reenactment will retrace the steps of the man who opened fire inside the school, and the families of the victims who brought the suit hope to prove former sheriff's deputy Scot Peterson could hear the shots "and knew where they were coming from,” CNN reported.

The reenactors will use the same model of semiautomatic rifle and caliber of cartridges and the bullets will be fired into a ballistic trap. Nine congressmen and families of the victims will tour the school this morning ahead of the reenactment, the second time a lawsuit has brought a tour to Marjory Stoneman Douglas: jurors in the death penalty trial of gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, also visited the site—he was sentenced to life without parole last year.

The civil lawsuit follows a criminal trial that saw Peterson charged with seven counts of felony child neglect and three counts of culpable negligence after prosecutors say he ignored his training and did nothing during the shooting; he was acquitted on all counts by a jury in June.

Victims' families and survivors of the shooting, which killed 14 students and three others, are seeking unspecified damages in the civil suit.

Cruz, who had been expelled from the school a year before the shooting for disciplinary reasons, opened fire at the school in the Miami suburb on Valentine's Day in 2018 in the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in the nation's history. The former student ran from the scene but was arrested an hour later and confessed to police. The Broward County Sheriff's Office has been widely criticized for its response to the shooting and the sheriff, Scott Israel, was removed from office for "incompetence and neglect of duty," NBC reported. The shooting re-ignited a nationwide movement for gun reform, and a group of survivors formed advocacy groups March for Our Lives and Never Again MSD. Former Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) one month later signed a law raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21.

“I’m like, ‘I know what I need to do, I need to bring as many members of Congress as possible,’” Max Schachter, father of a 14-year-old shooting victim, said Friday. “I want them to see what happens when you don’t prioritize the safety and security of our kids above education. Because what happens is you get dead kids, and we can’t let that happen.”

17. That’s how many people died in the Parkland shooting: Alyssa Alhadeff, 14; Scott Beigel, 35; Martin Duque Anguiano, 14; Nicholas Dworet, 17; Aaron Feis, 37; Jaime Guttenberg, 14; Chris Hixon, 49; Luke Hoyer, 15; Cara Loughran, 14; Gina Montalto, 14; Joaquin Oliver, 17; Alaina Petty, 14; Meadow Pollack, 18; Helena Ramsay, 17; Alex Schachter, 14; Carmen Schentrup, 16 and Peter Wang, 15.

Families of shooting victims were awarded $127.5 million last March in a suit that claimed negligence on the part of an FBI agent before the attack. Forty civil cases were filed by 16 of the 17 families of those killed. Families accused the FBI of failing to properly investigate tips about Cruz, including his collection of weapons and a tip that said Cruz was "going to slip into a school and start shooting the place up."

Before the Parkland school shooting gets reenacted with live gunfire, lawmakers tour the site where 17 people were massacred (CNN)

Parkland Officer Found Not Guilty For Failing To Confront School Shooter (Forbes)

Parkland Jury Verdict: Life In Prison For Gunman Nikolas Cruz (Forbes)

‘Cold’ And ‘Calculated’: Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty For Parkland School Shooter (Forbes)