PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Nine members of Congress are anticipated to tour the blood-stained and bullet-pocked halls at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Friday, shortly earlier than ballistics technicians reenact the bloodbath that left 14 college students and three employees members useless.
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 12 months’s penalty trial for the shooter.
There is damaged glass on the ground, together with wilted roses, deflated balloons and discarded items. Opened textbooks and laptop computer computer systems stay on college students’ desks — at the least those who weren’t toppled through the chaos.
In one classroom, there’s an unfinished chess recreation one of many slain college students had been enjoying, the items unmoved. The Associated Press was one in all 5 media retailers allowed to tour the constructing after shooter Nikolas Cruz’s jury went via.
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.
Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who organized the tour with Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, mentioned he expects the occasion to have “a profound impact” on the six Democrats and three Republicans who belong to the House School Safety and Security Caucus. They can be joined by Cruz’s prosecutors and members of the victims’ households.
This would be the first time a congressional delegation has toured the positioning of a mass taking pictures, Moskowitz mentioned. The tour was prompt by Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son, Alex, died within the taking pictures. Schachter is now a full-time faculty security advocate.
“When you watch something like this on TV, you’re a thousand feet away — they show a picture of the building,” mentioned Moskowitz, who’s a Stoneman Douglas graduate. “You don’t see the impact that the shooting had on the families … or the impact on a community when a school becomes a war zone.”
After the tour ends, the caucus members and households will go to a close-by lodge to debate faculty questions of safety. Moskowitz mentioned he thinks it can take time for the congressional members to take all the pieces in emotionally and intellectually.
“You’re not going to walk through this and then get out a pen and paper and start writing down your policy ideas,” he mentioned. “But we have got to figure out how no other families become part of this exclusive club no one wants to belong to.”
After the members go away, ballistics consultants will fireplace as much as 139 photographs of stay ammunition throughout a reenactment. The consultants will fireplace from the identical spots as Cruz, with an similar AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, and the bullets can be caught by a security system. The take a look at on the faculty, which is closed for summer time break, is anticipated to take a number of hours.
Technicians outdoors the constructing will document the sound of the gunfire, searching for to seize what the Broward County deputy assigned to the college, Scot Peterson, heard through the six-minute assault.
The reenactment is a part of a lawsuit by the victims’ households and the wounded that accuses Peterson of failing in his responsibility to guard them and their family members.
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 bought 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 knew 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 expenses 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 can 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.
After Friday, the Broward faculty district says it can start demolishing the constructing.
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