PARKLAND, Fla. – Gunfire erupted again at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Friday as part of a reenactment by ballistics experts of the 2018 massacre that left 14 students and three staff members dead.
Two shots were heard by reporters sitting about 200 yards (180 meters) from the building about noon and then two more about an hour later. A few hours later, the fire alarm went off, just like it did during the Valentine's Day 2018 attack, but no shots were heard underneath it. During the massacre, 139 shots were fired.
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The reenactment is part of a lawsuit by the victims’ families and the wounded that accuses the Broward County deputy assigned to the school, Scot Peterson, of failing in his duty to protect them and their loved ones. Peterson, who was acquitted at a criminal trial in June, has said that because of echoes he could not pinpoint the shooter's location.
David Brill, the attorney overseeing the reenactment on behalf of the families, did not return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment Friday. He told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that 49 rounds were fired Friday and that the test showed Peterson would have heard the shots and known their location.
The reenactment began shortly after nine members of Congress toured the blood-stained and bullet-pocked halls of the three-story classroom building where Nikolas Cruz carried out his six-minute attack. The building has been kept standing behind a locked chain-link fence to serve as evidence during Cruz's trial last year.
The shooting sparked a nationwide movement for gun control and traumatized the South Florida community. Cruz, a 24-year-old former Stoneman Douglas student, pleaded guilty in 2021 and was sentenced to life in prison.
The experts were firing with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle identical to the one Cruz used, and the bullets were to be caught by a safety device.
Peterson got within feet of the building’s door and drew his gun, but backed away and stood next to an adjoining building for 40 minutes, making radio calls. He has said he would have charged into the building if he had known the shooter’s location.
Families of the victims who filed the lawsuit contend Peterson knew Cruz’s location, but retreated out of cowardice.
Peterson, 60, was the first U.S. law enforcement officer ever tried criminally for conduct during an on-campus shooting.
The burden of proof is lower in the civil lawsuit, however. Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips allowed the reenactment, but made clear she was not ruling on whether the recording will be played at trial. That will have to be argued later, she said. It is likely Peterson’s attorneys will oppose the attempt.
No trial date has been set. The families and wounded are seeking unspecified damages.
Earlier in the day, six Democrats and three Republicans from the House School Safety and Security Caucus toured the building for almost two hours — an experience few have had since the shooting. They called it a “time-capsule” of the attack's devastation.
Broken glass still litters the floor, along with wilted roses, deflated balloons and discarded gifts. Opened textbooks and laptop computers remain on students’ desks — at least those that weren’t toppled during the chaos.
In one classroom, there is an unfinished chess game one of the slain students had been playing, the pieces unmoved. Reporters were barred from Friday's tour, but The Associated Press was one of five media outlets allowed inside after Cruz's jury went through last year.
“We just had a shared experience that will transform our lives for the rest of our lives. To see the blood of children on the floor in a school together, is going to change the way we interact and collaborate,” New York Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman said.
After the tour, the members traveled to a nearby hotel to discuss school safety issues with parents and wives who lost loved ones in the attack. The roundtable meeting was being held in the same ballroom where the families learned of their loved ones' deaths.
The members said that while there is wide disagreement on issues such as gun control, there should be bipartisan support for providing federal funds for installing bullet-proof glass and panic buttons in classrooms, mental health assistance for students and better training for on-campus police officers.
Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Stoneman Douglas graduate whose district includes Parkland, said Congress owes it to the families who have lost children, parents and spouses in school shootings to pass such measures and make campuses safer. He said seeing the scene allowed the members to fully grasp what happened.
“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,” said Moskowitz, who organized the tour with Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami. Moskowitz pointed out that Parkland, an upscale suburb of Fort Lauderdale, is considered Florida's safest city.
“It is now the home of the largest (high) school shooting in our history,” he said.
Diaz-Balart said that while touring the building, he was struck by how fast the lives were lost — all the fatalities happened within the attack's first four minutes.
“The key is not just to come and see, the key is that we can put aside our differences, put aside the perfect and try to get some good things done. I am optimistic," Diaz-Balart said.
The building is scheduled to be demolished soon, but the House members and families are hoping it can be kept up a bit longer so more state and federal legislators and White House advisors can also tour it.
Parent Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex died in the shooting, suggested the tour and school safety roundtable to Moskowitz.
“We can come together and enact common-sense school safety solutions so this will never happen again,” said Schachter, a former insurance broker who is now a full-time campus safety advocate. “Safety has to come before education — you cannot teach dead kids.”
The school is closed for the summer and no students or teachers were on campus Friday.