Returning to MSD
On February 14, 2018, at 2:19 p.m., 18–1958 stepped out of an Uber carrying a black canvas rifle bag and walked through an open gate at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.1
According to district policy, that gate should have been locked until 2:30 p.m. But, according to MSD teachers, a few months prior to the shooting, an assistant principal had ordered campus security monitors to start opening the gates earlier to expedite the process of getting ESE students onto school buses.
Campus security monitor Andrew Medina was riding around the perimeter in his golf cart unlocking the gates. He spotted 18–1958 as soon as he stepped out of the Uber, about a two-minute walk from Building 12. Medina later told the police, “I saw him with a bag, with like a rifle bag.”2 18–1958 was “bee-lining” to Building 12, with his head down, “on a mission…walking with a purpose.”3 Medina started riding toward him.
18–1958 looked back and made eye contact with Medina. Medina realized who it was. “That’s Crazy Boy!” he thought.
“I’m telling you I knew who that kid was,” Medina told the police, “because we had a meeting about him last year and we said if there’s going to be anybody who will come to this school and shoot this school up, it’s going to be that kid.” Then 18–1958 started running. Medina was close enough to intercept 18–1958, but he said that “something told me, ‘don’t approach him.’ You know? Like, I don’t know if he had a handgun. He could have had a handgun in a pocket.”
At that point, Medina could have called a Code Red. If someone in the office relayed that call over the intercom, students in Building 12 would have taken cover in areas of their classrooms not visible from the hallway. But according to a security consultant, principal Ty Thompson had made it clear that only he was allowed call a Code Red, and Thompson was off-campus that day traveling to Paris with his girlfriend.4
Instead, Medina radioed fellow campus security monitor and baseball coach David Taylor to tell him that a suspicious intruder with a bag was heading into his building from the east side. Taylor was posted on the west side of the second floor, monitoring the only unlocked bathrooms in that building. (Assistant Principal Winfred Porter had decided to lock most bathrooms and patrol the remaining ones in order to deter vaping and drug use.)
Taylor ran down the west stairwell. As he walked across the first floor, he saw 18–1958 coming out of the east stairwell. 18–1958 saw him and retreated into the stairwell. Taylor figured that 18–1958 was heading up the east stairwell, so he ran back to the west stairwell to see if he could spot him on the second floor.
But 18–1958 did not go upstairs. He took out his AR-15 and began to load the magazine. Just then, a freshman, Chris McKenna, walked into the stairwell on his way to the second-floor bathroom. 18–1958, gun in hand, told him, “You better get out of here. Things are going to get messy.” McKenna ran outside to find somebody to tell.
The first shots were fired down the first-floor hallway. A young girl who had left band class in a different building to use Building 12’s bathrooms was hit. Forgetting that the first-floor bathroom was locked, she tried to enter and then pressed herself against the doorway. She saw that a classroom door across the hallway was open. She made a run for it, entered the room, and finally feeling the pain from the gunshot wound, collapsed on the floor. She lived.
The three students in the hallway behind her did not.
Martin Duque Anguiano, 14
Luke Hoyer, 15
Gina Montalto, 14
Students inside the classrooms on the first floor did not instantly comprehend that the loud noises were gunshots. One girl in Room 1216 said that she thought that the noise was balloons popping. But then a bullet burst through the window of the classroom door and hit the top of her laptop screen. Another went through her sleeve, barely missing her arm.
Here and throughout the rest of the chapter, we provide you with accounts given by students to the police on the day of the massacre:
That’s when everyone started freaking out. And the teacher started screaming, saying to take cover and we all stood up and ran to her desk and she said that we couldn’t all sit there ‘cause it wasn’t large enough to protect us all. We were all…she was all scared like something else was going to happen. So I stood up and ran back to my desk, grabbed my phone and then ran to the other side of the room where I wasn’t in view of the door, and I stood against the wall, and I called 911 as fast as I could and I said, “Help Stoneman Douglas High School, there’s a shooter active and shooting at us all. There are some people that are now injured,” and she asked how many and I said, “By the looks of it was about five.” And she said, “Stand up and see if there’s any more,” and I’d seen after I had gotten shot there were two more shots and one had hit one of the girls that had sat next to me, um…at some part of her chest up I don’t really know exactly where it was. She slid against the wall and went down and that’s what freaked me out the most and so I said, “There are about five people.” And she asked me—the woman on the 911 call asked me to stand up and see if I saw any more, and I said that there was a boy hanging over the desk with blood dripping out of his head and he was like hyperventilating and trying to catch his breath and then all of a sudden he just stopped and like went limp. And I said, “I think he’s dead. Like, you need to get here as fast as you can.” I saw the bullet hole in his chest where the hole…where the shirt was so I knew he had gotten shot. I didn’t know what had happened, though.… Later we heard shots upstairs and we’re guessing that he had gone upstairs so the woman on the 911 called and said that if I felt comfortable I could stand up and try to do CPR and I said I would be OK with that. She said she’d talk me through it. So, I went to stand up and my teacher said no. That she didn’t think it was safe if I made too much noise. Like, he could come back down and I said okay. I sat back down. I was screaming on the phone, everyone is telling me to be quiet.… [Later] the cops finally came in and they broke the rest of the window open and they unlocked the door and they asked if we were all okay and we said yes and I had no shoes on at the time because they’re very uncomfortable and I’d taken them off and I walked over and I put them back on and I saw my best friend Alaina Petty and the original girl, Alyssa, down on the floor dead and I didn’t realize it was Alaina until I’d gotten home, and then I realized that I didn’t see her walk out.
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14
Alaina Petty, 14
Alex Schachter, 14
David Taylor heard the shots as he was heading up the stairwell and jumped into a closet to take cover. He did not call a Code Red.
Andrew Medina heard the shots from outside the building. He recalled:
I heard the first bang, like “POW!” and I’m like, uh-oh. [Then I heard] POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!… Three sets of five shots. And it was loud. You could kind of feel the percussion coming out of that building, the echo coming out of the doors of the building. It was loud. It was kind of surreal, because to hear that noise, it ain’t a firecracker noise. It wasn’t like somebody banging. It was something different. [I got on my radio and] I go “suspicious noises coming out of the 1200 Building,” ‘cause I don’t know yet. I’m not gonna say “gunshots.” You never know man, it could be, be, be, you know? That’s crazy, you know? So, I’m like “suspicious noises coming out of the 1200 Building, we got a suspicious guy in there.”
Later, in his conversation with the police, Medina explained why he did not call a Code Red.
I wasn’t gonna yell a Code Black or a Code Red because I didn’t actually visualize a gun, and I didn’t really see the shots. So, I’m not…you know. We’ve been doing this training at the school, you know, “Don’t yell it unless you actually get a good visual.” Because you go Code Black they shut the whole—you get the cops out there for nothing and I don’t want to be the guy who calls that, you know?
Medina turned around in his golf cart and started driving to the building where the only man on campus with a gun, Deputy Scot Peterson, was stationed.
When the students in Room 1214 heard the shots that were killing their classmates in Room 1216, they knew what was happening but not what to do. One student explained:
So the door is facing all the desks and then the teacher’s desk is over here and there’s a little…the desk is kind of in a cubby. It’s a cutout, then the door is in front of it so when we first heard the shots, the teacher and most of the kids went to the cubby area. Like, where you couldn’t shoot into, but me and the kids that were on this side we went it was probably six, seven kids we went to the front of the boardroom like where the whiteboard is and there was a file cabinet there and like immediately I moved the file cabinet so there was no angle where you could shoot us. Like I put it in front of the angle where if he was looking in it would hit the file cabinet. That was while the shots were going off, me and three others, like I grabbed them and we went down behind the thing and then a bunch of other kids came behind the file cabinet.… Two kids got shot next to me. They were, like, three feet away. I know that Nicholas Dworet, he’s a blond, he was on the floor and I know that Helena, I don’t know her last name but she’s in my grade, and Nicholas was a senior and Helena, I know that she died, she was definitely dead because she was still with blood everywhere.
The police officer asked her about the blood she had on her white Vans sneakers. She responded, “It was probably Nick’s. I mean, I would say it was Nick’s because he was closer to me than Helena. But Helena was—there was a ton of blood from Helena, so it could have been her.”
Nicholas Dworet, 17
Helena Ramsay, 17
When Andrew Medina reached Deputy Peterson’s building, Peterson had already come outside because of what he had heard Medina call over the radio. As Medina picked Peterson up, someone radioed, “It sounds like fireworks.” Campus security monitor Aaron Feis replied, “That’s not fucking fireworks.”
Winfred Porter, the assistant principal responsible for security, did not hear any of this. He later claimed to have had his radio on his person. Perhaps, as teachers allege is common practice, the volume was turned down. The first thing that Porter heard, more than one full minute after 18–1958 fired his first shots, was the fire alarm going off. According to reports, the fire alarm was activated by smoke from 18–1958’s rifle. Experts we’ve consulted have expressed incredulity at the idea that a semiautomatic rifle could produce sufficient smoke to activate a fire alarm. However, MSD’s fire alarm was notoriously hypersensitive and, as we’ve explained, several years overdue for replacement.
The fire alarm panel in the office told Porter that there was a gas leak in Building 12. The appropriate response to this alarm would have been to call a Code Brown over the intercom. This would have told students and teachers within Building 12 to evacuate and students and teachers in other buildings to shelter in place. However, Porter called an order to evacuate all buildings. 18–1958’s original plan was to go to the third floor of Building 12 and shoot down at students as they left the school. Porter’s mistaken evacuation call, based on a false signal from a faulty alarm, assured that students would pour out into the open.
On the third floor of Building 12, Kim Krawczyk had recognized the sound of gunshots before the fire alarm went off. She told all of her students to hide where they couldn’t be spotted and to stay quiet. After the fire alarm ceased, a student told her, “They’re telling us to evacuate, Ms. K.” Kim responded, “Stay there. Shut up. Do not fucking move.”
Outside the building, MSD’s athletic director, Chris Hixon, understood that there was a shooting and ran toward Building 12. He entered through the west entrance, saw the shooter, and charged down the first-floor hallway hoping to tackle 18–1958. He barely made it ten yards before getting shot. Injured, Hixon retreated and took cover near the elevator door.
Then the shooter approached Room 1213. A student there told the police:
And we were in the classroom and when we heard the first shots go off, and everybody jumped to the floor. Once that happened, um, we were all crowded against the wall and then once we didn’t hear shots for a couple of seconds we ran over to the designated area, which is behind the teacher’s desk. Once we were there we were all crowded together, um, just hugging, listening to the shots go off. Then after a couple of seconds he shot through the glass and into the classroom and the students in my classroom didn’t realize at first but he had shot four kids in my class. They were screaming and moaning for help but nobody had realized that anything had happened. Finally, once all the shots stopped going off, I stood up and I looked over the desk to see that four of the students were on the floor covered in blood.
Carmen Schentrup, 16
Deputy Scot Peterson arrived in Medina’s golf cart on the east side of Building 12 eight seconds after Carmen was fatally shot in Room 1213. Hearing the shots, Peterson told Medina that there was an active shooter and that he should “get out of here!”
Peterson drew his gun. And stood there.
Ever since Columbine, police have been trained to immediately confront a school shooter.
If officers are uncertain of the shooter’s location, they are trained to fire warning shots into the air. Often, the sound of these shots is enough to stop a shooting. The shooter may react to the prospect of confrontation by taking cover, fleeing, or committing suicide.
But Peterson just stood there.
As he stood there, 18–1958 walked down the first-floor hallway. He came across a wounded Hixon and fired more rounds into him.
Chris Hixon, 49
And Peterson just stood there.
Moments before Hixon was shot a second time, Aaron Feis arrived at the west side of Building 12. Chris McKenna had found him and told him there was a gunman, so Feis had no doubt about what was happening inside.
Feis ran in, entering the west stairwell at the exact moment as 18–1958. According to his brother Ray, the burns left on his hands showed that he managed to get a grip on 18–1958’s rifle an instant before the fatal shots were fired. He fell in the doorway, his body visible from outside the building.
Aaron Feis, 37
As 18–1958 walked up the stairs, Peterson retreated to take cover behind a neighboring building. Peterson radioed, “I think we got shots fired. Possible shots fired in the 1200 Building.”
18–1958 started walking across the second floor. Every teacher on the second floor recognized the sound of gunshots before the fire alarm went off and hid their students. Several teachers on the third floor, including Stacey Lippel, Ernie Rospierski, and Scott Beigel, did not. If a Code Red had been called, they would have directed their students to shelter. Instead, they began leading their students out of the classrooms for a fire drill. As 18–1958 walked across the empty second floor, there were over a hundred students directly above him, crowded into the hallway and totally confused as to what was happening.
18–1958 was confused too. He shot into two classrooms. By a stroke of luck, both were empty. The other second-floor teachers had hid their students out of sight of the doorway, so other classrooms appeared empty.
“Where did all the kids go?” he said out loud.
“Uh,” Peterson said on his radio, “make sure we got—get some units over here. I need to shut down Stoneman Douglas, the intersection.” As 18–1958 shot into his second empty classroom on the second floor, Peterson radioed, “We’re talking about the 1200 Building.”
By this point many, but not all, students in the third-floor hallway understood that something bad was happening. The students who had already reached the east stairwell ran down it and outside. Everything in the hallway was confusion. Some students started walking or running east, but others were being urged to continue to evacuate for the fire drill.
“We don’t have any description,” Peterson radioed, still hiding behind a neighboring building. “But there appear to be shots fired.”
The shooter began to ascend the east stairwell to the third floor. The hallway on the third floor was bedlam. On the west side of the hallway, Rospierski told students to go back into their classrooms, with no apparent knowledge that there was a shooter. On the east side of the hallway, Lippel urged her students toward the stairwell. One of Lippel’s students recalls:
We were in the hallway and then my teacher was saying, “Guys, go to Zone 10, Zone 10, go, go to the left.” And then you see, like, kids. Like they’re barely moving but they’re like making their way downstairs. Then all of a sudden you hear “Bah! Bah! Bah!” in the stairwell and then everyone right away starts running to the right, and then my teacher, she opens the door, like, like super-fast.
So, then we all go inside the classroom. I was the first one to go inside the classroom and then we, it was not everyone from my classroom. There was in there some kids from other classrooms and then some kids from my classroom was in other ones, but then two kids from my classroom, they didn’t make it. Meadow Pollack and Joaquin Oliver. They both passed away in the hallway, but I don’t know where Meadow was. I know Joaquin died in the third, like, in front of the third-floor bathroom. Then, um, he shot into our classroom. My classroom was the only classroom on the third floor who got shot into.
Mr. Beigel’s classroom was the closest to the stairwell. After hearing the gunshots, he started yelling down the hallway for students to run and directed his students to go back into his classroom. Then he stood in the hallway to lock his door. Classroom doors in Building 12 lock only from the outside. One student recalled:
He was standing at the door. But he didn’t scream or anything. He just fell. And he was trying to close the door and then he got shot. He was, like, in the middle of the door. That’s why we couldn’t close the door. So, the door was open.
Scott Beigel, 35
If the shooter had peeked inside the open door, he could have taken fourteen more lives right then and there. But he didn’t. He shot into Ms. Lippel’s classroom next door, doubled back a few steps, and reloaded directly in front of Beigel’s classroom. But he never looked inside.
There were about twenty students still in the hallway. He fired, hitting:
Jaime Guttenberg, 14
Cara Loughran, 14
Joaquin Oliver, 17
Meadow Pollack, 18
Peter Wang, 15
A student in Ms. Lippel’s classroom called her father.
I mean, it took, like, a few rings and then I heard him. Because whenever I call him, like, during the day he doesn’t really answer it because, like, I’m at school. I’m supposed to be learning. But, so, then he answered and I was surprised he answered because, like, he never, answers. So, then I, like, when I heard his voice…I was all calm throughout the whole thing.
Then, once I heard my dad’s voice, I started bawling because I’m just like, “Oh, my God, this might be the last time I ever hear my dad’s voice.” And he’s just like, “What happened?” I’m just like, “Oh, Papi, there’s a school shooter in the class.” He was like, “What, what, say that again?” Like, I was whispering really quiet. I’m like, “There’s a school shooter in the classroom.” He’s just like, “What? Oh, my God? Are you serious?” Like, “Be careful.” Like, “Be quiet.” Like, “Be calm.”
And my teacher, she kind of yelled at me because, like, I’m not supposed to be talking during that. Because you’re supposed to be quiet and our glass is broken so, like, he could have heard everything in case he was, like, by our door. Then she, like, told me, like, “Put your phone away right now.” I’m like, “Okay, okay.” And then I tell my dad I gotta go. He’s like, “No. Stay on the phone, stay on the phone.” My teacher is, like, “No, put it away now.” I’m like, “I gotta go.”
So, then I hung up and then, like, in the hallway you hear, like, gunshots still, just in, like, so we’re, like, really quiet and there’s kids in my class crying hysterically. Oh, yeah, the first thing that we heard was a kid, like, a boy, like, saying, like, “Please. Please help me. Please let me in the classroom.” Like, he was crying because, like, when that happens you’re not allowed to let anybody in, and, like, we were scared ourselves because our door was broken.
So, like, we don’t know if he was there, if Nikolas was making him do it, or anybody was making him do that. So then, we were so…that’s all you heard and the kids were crying because you felt so bad you couldn’t help him. Like, obviously, you knew, like, he might die. And then, sadly, he did. He died right in front of our classroom. When the police came that’s, that’s who was in front of our door.
But then you also heard, like, moaning from the shots. I don’t know if it was, like, the shooter who was making that noise or if it was someone who got shot. And, but, then, that’s also, you also heard…heard, like, laughing. And we all look at each other in the classroom we’re just like, “Oh, my God, is someone seriously laughing?”
If 18–1958 had shot into any other third-floor classrooms, there is no telling how many more students he could have killed. As many as seventy ran into Robyn Mickow’s classroom before the door finally closed. If 18–1958 had shot through the window of her door, he could have murdered dozens more.
After getting as many students as he could into the stairwell on the west side, Rospierski used his body to barricade the stairwell doorway to prevent 18–1958 from pursuing them. After testing the door, 18–1958 walked away from the stairwell and into the teachers’ lounge.
Rospierski risked his life to give his students more time to flee. Feis and Hixon gave their lives in unarmed attempts to take down the shooter. There could be no greater contrast between those three heroes and Deputy Peterson, who drew his gun and hid outside the building next door for nearly a full hour, or the Broward sheriff’s deputies who had just arrived on the scene.5
The Police Response
18–1958 had reached his intended destination. He wanted to shoot down from the teachers’ lounge at all the students who, thanks to Porter’s evacuation order, were outside. But the bullets fired from his AR-15 were too weak to shatter the hurricane-proof glass. Broward deputies Perry, Goolsby, Miller, Seward, and Stambaugh arrived on the road one hundred yards north of Building 12. Hearing the gunshots, Deputy Stambaugh realized he was not wearing his bulletproof vest. He went to back to his car and took one full minute to put his vest on as the shots were ringing out from Building 12. Then he just stood there.
Deputy Eason, who had previously told a concerned mother that 18–1958’s threat to shoot up the school was protected by the First Amendment, took a position on the road three hundred yards west of Building 12.
Sergeant Miller was the supervising officer on the scene. After hearing the shots, he put on his bulletproof vest and hid behind his car. It was his responsibility to direct the response of the officers on the scene. But he did not get on his radio for five full minutes. Deputies Kratz and Seward just stood by Miller.
Deputies Goolsby and Perry began to approach, but then took cover behind trees as 18–1958 fired off his final shots in a failed effort to break through the hurricane-proof glass.
It is astonishing that 18–1958 only took seventeen lives that day. The death toll could easily have been 170. He had ten minutes alone with eight hundred children. The only one who stopped him was himself. He dropped his rifle and left the building, blending in with fleeing students.
From a position where he could have seen 18–1958 walk out of Building 12, Peterson radioed, “Do not approach the twelve or thirteen hundred buildings. Stay at least five hundred feet away.”
“Stay away from the twelve and thirteen hundred buildings,” the police radio dispatcher repeated.
“I had a parent tell me there was a child down. Have fire rescue stage in the area until we make contact,” Deputy Perry radioed from behind his tree.
As she pulled up in her cruiser, Jan Jordan, the captain in charge of the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO) Parkland District, could have seen 18–1958 walking away from Building 12. Her police radio wasn’t working. The BSO radio system was notoriously faulty, and failed to work properly on Parkland even on a normal day. This problem was well known, especially given the fact that the radio system had failed during the disorganized and widely criticized BSO response to the 2017 Fort Lauderdale airport shooting. But Sheriff Scott Israel, who once spent $12,500 to put his face on police cruisers around election time, prioritized so-called “community outreach” efforts over replacing the radio system.6
According to The New Yorker, Israel “failed to engage sufficiently in the essential if unglamorous work of overseeing law enforcement in a large and complex U.S. county and…was overly focused on the politics of prolonging his tenure.”7 Critics allege that Israel swept out experienced commanders and installed his own, often less experienced, political loyalists.
But Israel swore that he did not bring Jordan on as his Parkland commander because of politics. Rather, he insisted, she was a “diversity” hire. According to Israel, the Parkland city manager asked him to put forward three candidates for the city manager’s consideration with an eye toward “diversity.” He therefore nominated Jordan (presumably because she fit two diversity categories: woman and homosexual) and the Parkland city manager hired her.8 The MSD Commission concluded that this “diversity” hire was “ineffective in her duties as the initial incident commander. While Captain Jordan experienced radio problems that hindered her ability to transmit, nobody reported receiving command-and-control directions from Jordan in person.”
Eight Broward sheriff’s deputies heard 18–1958’s final shots. None went in to face the shooter. Remarkably, by declining to confront an individual who could have been murdering many more children as they stood outside, these deputies were actually operating in accordance with a policy change made by Sheriff Israel. Israel changed BSO’s active shooter policy from saying that deputies “shall” enter a building to address a shooter to saying that they “may.”
The MSD Commission concluded that “Sheriff Israel inserted the word ‘may’ in the BSO policy, and it is insufficient and fails to unequivocally convey the expectation that deputies are expected to immediately enter an active assailant scene where gunfire is active and to neutralize the threat. The use of the word ‘may’ in BSO policy is inconsistent with current and standard law enforcement practices.”
What’s more, whereas the Coral Springs Police Department (CSPD) did annual active shooter training, BSO deputies could not recall the date or nature of their last active shooter training.
Jordan entered Building 1 and paced back and forth. Finally, she got a message through on her radio: “I know there’s lots going on. Do we have the perimeter set up right now and everyone cleared out of the school?”
The dispatcher responded, “That’s a negative.”
As Jordan called for a perimeter, five CSPD officers—Mazzei, Myers, Wilkins, Mazon, and Harrison—arrived on the scene. Fortunately, their radios were on a different frequency, so they did not hear Jordan’s order. They rushed straight toward the building. As officer Wilkins approached the school, a Broward deputy told him, “We all can’t stand behind this tree, we’re going to get shot.”9, 10
But the CSPD officers would not hide outside while children were being murdered. They formed a group and, joined by BSO deputies Hanks and Volpe, ran into Building 12 from the west side eleven minutes after the first shots were fired. They spotted Hixon, who was not yet dead, and tried to get him medical attention. Then they began searching and clearing the building.
As they were clearing the first floor, Jordan radioed, “I want to make sure that the perimeter is set up, and the school is being…all the kids are getting out. So, we need to shut down around the school.” She was then informed that, without her orders, teams had already entered Building 12.
Another group of BSO deputies, led by deputy Greetham, arrived at Building 1. Greetham spent over one full minute unslinging his rifle, taking his body camera off, putting his bulletproof vest on, putting his body camera on, and then re-slinging his rifle. When another deputy approached him, Greetham told him to wait “while I get dressed.” After getting dressed, Greetham and other deputies stood there debating whether to head toward Building 12.
Before the group of CSPD officers entered Building 12 from the west side, CSPD officer Tim Burton approached Peterson in his hiding position on the east side and asked for a situation report. Peterson told Burton that the shooter might be in the parking lot behind him and to “cover his six,” i.e., watch his back.
Four minutes later, after the group of CSPD officers entered from the west side, CSPD officer Best approached Peterson and asked for a situation report. Peterson told him that the shooter was on the second or third floor of Building 12.
Two minutes later, Coral Springs officers Kozlowski and Mock ran into the building from the east side and were quickly joined by officers Fernandez, Whittington, Carvalho, and Dittman and then by BSO deputies Seward, Carbocci, Valdes, and Johnson. Peterson watched them. He remained in his hiding spot for a total of about fifty minutes before finally moving further away from Building 12.
Many school districts allow law enforcement to have real-time remote access to school security video footage. But not the Broward County Public Schools. This policy set the stage for a deadly tragicomedy of errors.
Three minutes after 18–1958 left Building 12, at 2:31 p.m., Kelvin Greenleaf and Jeff Morford entered the security video room. They rewound the videotape, hoping to identify the shooter, who was now nowhere to be seen. They then related what they saw by radio to Winfred Porter and Scot Peterson, apparently without making it clear that they were describing delayed footage.
At 2:46 p.m., BSO deputy Rossman heard Porter mention that there were MSD staff in the camera room. He directed Porter to radio them for intel. Porter told Rossman what Morford and Greenleaf had told him, and Rossman radioed the intel to BSO deputies inside Building 12.
At 2:50 p.m., Porter told Rossman, “He went to the second floor.” Rossman radioed, “The subject was last seen on the second floor.” At about the same time, CSPD officer Best relayed the same message, which he received from Peterson, on the CSPD radio. This news halted the progress of the group on the second floor, who now believed that the shooter might be within yards of their location, perhaps in any classroom or closet. Three minutes later, Morford announced that 18–1958 was leaving the third floor and going back to the second floor. This was a twenty-six-minute delay.
“Is this live intel?” BSO deputy Rossman asked.
Porter, who was on his cellphone, replied, “This is live.”
Rossman told Porter to get off his cellphone and then asked Porter, “Where was he last seen? This is live? Right now?”
“This is live,” Porter confirmed.
“They are monitoring the subject right now,” Rossman said at 2:54 p.m. “He went from the third floor to the second floor.… The subject is now back down on the second floor.” Porter then tried to explain to Rossman that the footage was actually not live, but Rossman didn’t instantly comprehend it.
A minute later, Rossman repeated, “They are monitoring the subject right now. He went from the third floor to the second floor.”
“You’re asking me if this is live intel?” Porter said. “Is that where he is right now? That’s where they last saw him on the camera.” Rossman did not acknowledge Porter’s statement. BSO deputy Greetham, now inside Building 1, asked Porter if he could pull up the live feed on his phone and Porter said that he couldn’t. At 2:57 p.m., Porter told Rossman, “They’re looking at recorded feeds, not live feeds.” Rossman did not broadcast this fact over his radio for another four minutes. At 3:00 p.m., Morford announced that 18–1958 had run out of the building. At 3:01 p.m., a group of police officers reached the third floor, thirty-six minutes after Meadow and other students there were shot.11
As the CSPD officers and BSO deputies were clearing Building 12, they began to triage the wounded and dying. Coral Springs deputy Michael McNally repeatedly asked Jordan for permission to send medics in. Jordan, potentially still under the impression that there was an active shooter, repeatedly denied permission. She continued to deny permission even after the delayed footage showed that the shooter had left.12 Several parents suspect that if not for those crucial minutes of further delay, their children may have received medical attention quickly enough to have survived.
As 18–1958 attempted to flee the scene, a former classmate
spotted him:
I said, like, “I thought you got expelled last year.” And he’s like, “No, the school took me back in.” I don’t know, for some reason I believed him and he was pretty scared, like, he was all, like, terrified. I thought about trying to make a joke about it, like, “Oh, aren’t you supposed to be the one [who would shoot up the school]?” But I didn’t, ‘cause I knew what kind of person he was and I didn’t want to trigger him or anything.
The police pieced together a description from witness accounts. A little over an hour after 18–1958 left Building 12, Coconut Creek police officer Leonard apprehended him.
1 This chapter draws heavily upon witness statements given to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement which have been acquired via public records requests. It also draws upon presentations by investigators from the MSD Public Safety Commission on November 13–15, 2018, as well as the final report published on January 2, 2019. Full report can be accessed online here: http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/MSDHS/Meetings/2019/January/Documents/MSD-Report-Public-Version.aspx?fbclid=IwAR12xa8k9YycpSfAoZsoXzt2wxvsUFpEnw2_hj04lAa0F-KMGTirJ1KG-ns.
2 Andrew Medina, first statement to the Broward sheriff’s office the day of the shooting. All statements by Andrew Medina are taken from his comments to the police the day of the shooting.
3 Full video of Andrew Medina’s sworn statement to the Broward Sheriff’s Office can be viewed online. Amy Rock, “2 Stoneman Douglas Security Monitors Reassigned, Criticized for Response,” Campus Safety, June 7, 2018, https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/safety/stoneman-douglas-security-monitors/.
4 Lisa J. Huriash, “Retired Secret Service Agent had Warned Stoneman Douglas About Security Failures,” Sun Sentinel, June 8, 2018, https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-sb-douglas-secret-service-steve-wexler-20180605-story.html. Later training indicated that anyone could call a Code Red, but staff evinced confusion on this count when interviewed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Andrew Medina recalls being told that it should only be called if you see a gun; David Taylor recalled something similar though less categorical. It is astonishing that multiple campus security monitors who either knew or suspected that there was an active shooting refused to call a Code Red. The MSD Commission report considered this a system failure, rooted in bad policy and training.
5 The details of the law enforcement response in this chapter come from the presentation made by Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputy John Suess at the November 14, 2018, meeting of the MSD Public Safety Commission, accessed November 29, 2018. http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/MSDHS/Meetings/November-Meeting-Documents/Nov-14-100pm-Law-Enforcement-Response-John-Suess.aspx.
6 Bob Norman, “Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel’s Photo Taken Off Official Cars,” News Channel 10, September 29, 2015, https://www.local10.com/news/florida/broward/broward-county-sheriff-scott-israels-photo-taken-off-official-cars-.
7 Charles Bethea, “The Troubled Tenure of Scott Israel, Sheriff of Broward County,” The New Yorker, March 16, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-troubled-tenure-of-scott-israel-sheriff-of-broward-county.
8 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission Meeting, Remarks by Sheriff Israel, November 15, 2018, http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/MSDHS/Meetings/2018/November-Meeting-Documents/11-15-18.aspx.
9 Later, Sunrise Police Officer Cardinale arrived on the scene and spotted several BSO deputies at the gate. “Don’t go in,” one told him, “the shooter’s in that building right there,” Carindale’s son was in the building. “Fuck you,” Cardinale responded, “I’m going in.” He entered and helped triage the wounded for medical attention. His son was unharmed.
10 Nicholas Nehamas et al., “‘The Cavalry Is Here, I Can Let Go’: Inside the Long Wait for Help at Parkland Massacre,” Miami Herald, December 19, 2018, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article223332970.html.
11 The MSD Public Safety Commission noted that “The Broward County Public School’s decision not to allow law enforcement live and real-time direct access to the school camera systems in Broward County, including the system at MSDHS, severely affected law enforcement efforts to locate Cruz and delayed victim rescue efforts.” The commission recommended that all school districts in Florida should allow police real-time direct access and provide them with training on how to use it. At the beginning of the next school year, Broward County School District’s Chief of School Performance and Accountability Valerie Wanza, wrote a memo to clarify that it would not change its policy position. In cases of “eminent [sic] threat,” Wanza wrote, “law enforcement is permitted to view school video surveillance in the presence of school employees.… Requests for copies of video footage must be made through the subpoena process.”
12 Megan O’Matz and Lisa Huriash, “More Medics Kept Asking to Go in and Rescue Wounded at Stoneman Doulgas. They Kept Being Told No.” Sun Senti-nel, May 31, 2018, https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-school-shooting-paramedics-entry-20180531-story.html.