17 Dead in Florida High School Shooting, Suspect in Custody
Suspect is a former student.
At least 17 people have died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, after a gunmen opened fire at the end of the school day. Officials have the suspect, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, in custody.
From The Wall Street Journal:
The victims include both students and teachers, the sheriff said. Twelve people were killed inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., three outside the school and two people died at the hospital.
The school, which has an enrollment of 3,200 students, is northwest of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“It is a horrific situation,” said Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie. “It is a horrible day for us.”
The sheriff said some people were in surgery Wednesday night.
The superintendent said he was unaware of any sign that an attack was coming. “We didn’t have any warnings, there weren’t any phone calls or threats that we know of that were made,” he said.
The school expelled Cruz, a former student, for disciplinary reasons.
The Broward County sheriff’s department received word about the shooting at 3PM:
Nina Berkowitz, a senior at the school, said she and other students walked out of the school for what seemed like a fire drill. Then a teacher started shouting, “Code red! Code red! Everyone back in the building!”
“We thought it was a drill, but we all sprinted back into the building,” she said.
Ms. Berkowitz said she took shelter with a large group of people in a windowless television-production room, and stayed there for about 90 minutes. Then she and the others were ushered to an English classroom, where about 160 other students and six staff members waited to be evacuated.
A 7News viewer says this video came from her little brother, showing the SWAT team evacuating his classroom at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after this afternoon's shooting.
Video: @Melody_Ball pic.twitter.com/d9wPh7jVoY
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) February 14, 2018
12 deceased victims inside school have not yet been identified pic.twitter.com/xjPgNOhyDT
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) February 14, 2018
#UPDATE: Broward Sheriff: Shooting suspect was expelled for disciplinary reasons pic.twitter.com/IjXAiU2OxI
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) February 14, 2018
UPDATE: @browardsheriff confirms 17 people have died: 12 in the building, 2 outside of the building, 1 on Pine Island Rd., and 2 in the hospital. https://t.co/w4rCxG0lrt pic.twitter.com/oyBuACp8A4
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) February 14, 2018
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Comments
Is it wise to order students who are already outside back into the school? Are they afraid police will shoot the students outside? What’s the logic?
logic? what makes you think “logic” has anything to do with the planned responses?
With no armed guards (plural) and/or concealed carry, we’re sitting ducks – everywhere.
But concealed carry is preferable to living in a police state. Had some of the teachers been licensed to carry, this bastard would have died after the first couple of shots.
We can’t say what would have happened if someone had been armed and that is not even the real effect that is desired. These cowards chose their targets because they know it is an area where they won’t catch a bullet in the ass. The deterrent effect is more what you are looking to take effect.
Gun Free Zones kill because the attackers have confidence they are going to have a good few minutes of carnage. However that equation changes when you know there are people with guns who will shoot back.
Set off the alarm, then shoot them as they come out. Not the first time that’s been tried. Go back inside, not such easy targets.
Yet another reason why “lockdown”—which makes a flexible solution to a dynamic problem impossible—is not a good way to deal with emergencies.
Especially if you have no real way of “locking down” doors and entrances which most schools do not.
In my old school the custodians would lock doors at whim by chaining them. Without chains, they were conventional doors as usually found in modern public buildings—horizontal pressure bars opened them outward from the inside, so that crowds escaping fires wouldn’t be trapped. With the chains, there was no possible entrance or egress for anybody unless they broke the glass.
Not even the local fire department was ever able to do anything about this.
In those days we didn’t have “gun-free zones” but we did occasionally have fires.
One analyst on Tucker Carlson (FoxNews) last night said something like, “We practice for fires (fire drills), but there hasn’t been a problematic fire in a school in 50(?) years. We need to practice how to get out of schools in events like this.” (I think I got this right)
He went on to explain how businesses teach multiple paths of egress – breaking glass to get out, helping people escape, etc. Even DHS teaches “Run, Hide, Fight” as their three stages of defense. The UK teaches “Run, Hide, Tell” – they’ve removed fight (self-defense) from their personal vocabulary.
If someone has clearer memory than me, feel free to correct me.
Except in this case he is supposed to have set off the Fire Alarm in order to move students and staff from the classrooms to the hallways (more like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel in a crowded hallway). He was already in the building (obviously, he set off the Fire Alarm) and apparently shot all his victims while inside.
Problem of knowledge; you can’t make a plan around knowing where someone is when the existing defenses failed. (he’s not supposed to be in the building, after all)
It is why the various twits who want to punish folks who don’t follow the “plan” in the face of different situations should be smacked down hard, though.
…there is a plan where this can work out fine, but it requires allowing qualified people to have their weapons in the building, which is verboten.
That’s why there has to be flexibility and options. You cannot punish anyone who improvises when the procedure goes sideways.
The school has an absolute horror of losing control and not being able to account for students and staff. They have the same immediate fear of telling the authorities or parents a student is shot as they do of saying, “we don’t know what happened or where they are.”
Re: sending people back inside.
Tactically, if they are close enough to the school that they’ll listen to the teacher– rather than sprinting for the fence as one guy I heard about did, in the middle of a batch of like-minded folks scattering– it is a good idea to get back in to cover.
Especially for something like a fire drill, where it’s possible to know exactly where people will be exiting and that provides a choke-point where the attacker knows there will be a lot of people, and their options for movement are limited.
I do not like the “and then put them in large, open rooms with windows and without defensive measures beyond ‘chuck a chair at him’,” for obvious reasons.
Sadly, the next obvious step is to make it so that going back in the building is as dangerous as being outside– or seems like it. Setting the place on fire would be an obvious option.
(Note: not going to be giving anybody ideas, it’s what they did before there were fire alarms, and it was featured in the commercial for a vampire movie years ago.)
known disciplinary problem, known mental health issues, prohibited from campus, gun free zone, registered Demonrat…
the obvious solution is to ban firearms.
” the obvious solution is to ban firearms. ”
Are you being sarcastic?
Britain which has banned firearms has seen a rise in gun crimes.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/27/violent-rising-england-wales-police-figures-ons
” England and Wales saw ‘small but genuine’ increases in murder and other violent crimes in 2016, including 13-14% increases in gun and knife crime ”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/12/inspectorate-warns-of-serious-concerns-over-met-police-performance
” Gun crime was up 42% and knife crime rose 24%. Overall crime was up 4.5% to nearly 774,737 offences, with 16.72% counted as solved, down from 18.8% the previous year. “
I think you might have missed the /sarcasm in that last line.
There’s nothing more heartbreaking than to bury young people – particularly when they’re murdered. RIP and prayers for the survivors. I’ll leave any further comments until later.
Heartbreaking is exactly right.
But, in reality, there are more people killed by illegals in less than a month, either by DUI, out and out murder of innocent, and gang activity.
A known problem person. I’m going to wait a couple days and see what comes of this, but again looks like a completely preventable mass shooting.
The FBI was notified months ago that Cruz intended to shoot up a school. He bragged about it on YouTube. So what did the FBI do? They came out and interviews the good citizen who alerted them and that was it. I guess they were too busy investigating Trump to take this seriously.
Exactly.
Add the Vegas shooting FBI incompetence to this, plus the illegal surveillance, and likely other yet-to-be-revealed malfeasance, and it’s pretty clear FBI is incompetent and corrupt.
Time to dissolve FBI.
At least their priorities were in order.
Against a background cacophony of Democrats calling for gun control and Republicans calling for mental health/family dysfunction remedies, no one is even whispering one suggestion that could be a simple and effective approach.
Google, Facebook, and Twitter already deploy algorithms that identify and ban users who violate a variety “policies” (oddly, mostly Conservative users). Why couldn’t they develop algorithms that identify potential school shooters? Does “See something, say something” not apply to them, too?
“See something, say something”
And then what? Banning from legally required school is not quite the same as banning from Facebook or Twitter.
I see you missed the low-level snark implied by my “See something, say something” comment. I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of most proposed solutions. The tools are available to help prevent these types of tragedies, but it seems those who wield them are wont to use them for less beneficial ends.
As for “and then what?”, well, that’s the cacophony.
No, the real discussion that should be had is ending these soft targets and getting rid of the ridiculous regulations that prohibit law abiding adults from carrying on school grounds.
It’s time to end the era of the soft targets called “gun free zones”.
One problem is the size of some of these schools. 4000 students? That’s crazy. Break up the school into smaller pieces. Life isn’t about who can play Division I football/baseball/basketball in High School.
and how do you really see that one turning out? Anyone who has anything pro gun, likes a gun manufacturer, likes a gun seller, or even likes a freaking picture or video of a gun will become a “suspected school shooter”!
I would trust any of those bigots to identify potential potato cannon users and certainly not with something this important.
See my reply above to Mr. Swift. Google/Facebook/Twitter are just like a gun, they are nothing but a tool. It’s all in how you use it. I think I pointed out how those who wield them are.
I agree up to a point. However, they are tools that are not in your control, much like a gun held by someone you don’t know.
“Google, Facebook, and Twitter already deploy algorithms that identify and ban users who violate a variety “policies”…
All part of the plan. Don’t fall for it.
Hillary klinton (and bill) – with the complicity of saddam hussein obama – corrupted every every American institution worth a damn to try an fix an election because ‘it was her turn.’ When she lost, she continued the corruption at the expense of our nation.
This bastard (probably, literally a bastard) Nikolas Cruz killed 17 high school students because he probably thinks he was cheated out of ‘his turn’ too.
That’s narcissists for you.
Now we have a generation of them, ticking like a time bomb.
The solution? Teach them the tough love they were deprived of by their idiot liberal parents and their leftist educators.
Cruz should be tried and executed as quickly as Timothy McVeigh was. The hell with plea bargains: kill him.
Florida has the Death Penalty. He will surely fry.
Not so sure. Some lawyer will claim poor upbringing and mental issues and some bleeding heart on the jury will vote no on the death penalty.
Mental health issues are a given. Who taunts the FBI before carrying out mass murder? ISIS taunts, but they do not reveal specific plans in advance.
There just isn’t an easy solution to this – Democrats will moan about gun control or banning scary looking firearms when a person with a functioning brain realizes this will solve nothing. I think the answer is far more difficult to pin point as it involves a great number of things – culture, parenting, perpetual dehumanizing of life by our entertainment, vessel to institutionalize psychotic persons, psychotropic medications, etc.
There is a very easy solution to the school shooting threat, harden the targets. Establish effective entry controls and institute active security personnel. The vast majority of schools, and school systems, have neither in place. So, schools become shooting galleries. Until, school systems start taking school security seriously, these things will simply keep happening.
BINGO! Then we start asking why soldiers that we send into harm’s way aren’t allowed to be armed on base. Frankly, active military service should be treated as a blanket license to carry concealed or open.
I’m all for armed people in the schools, allowing teachers to carry, for example.
But I don’t know what “effective entry controls” means. Even if you somehow, fantastically, got to the point where only students and faculty could ever get inside a school and a 100% guarantee that zero weapons could never get in, a killer just needs wait until school is out and start mowing down people.
We’ve had firearms and schools our entire country’s history, but mass shootings at schools are a relatively recent thing. Seems to me there is something else going wrong in society vs. an inability to turn schools into fortresses.
Effective entry control is the easy part. You allow entry, and routine exit, through a limited number of portals. All other portals are strictly for emergency exit and are locked down.
However, this is of limited value if you do not have active, armed security at the entrances and elsewhere on site. And, this is where schools come up short.
As to the possibility that a shooter or sniper could wait just off school grounds to shoot students, this is a possibility and it has happened in the past. But, a properly equipped and trained security force can limit the amount of damage any sniper or armed intruder can do. It is impossible to project a protective bubble over an entire community, nation or the world. But, it is possible to harden specific targets significantly and easily. If the people responsible for administering such facilities choose not to take reasonable steps to secure them, then guess who shares responsibility for any negative outcomes of their policies?
Agree on that front – doing a better job on securing soft targets is fairly easy but again, the overall problem is still present. I don’t really want those same procedures to buy groceries or attend a movie.
Although the odds of being in a mass school shooting is still a low probability I marvel at how badly security measures are done at the college I formerly worked and the school my children attend.
How about getting serious? We got serious about preventing deaths in schools from fires. We can do the same with shootings.
Active shooters in schools: The enemy is denial
Preventing juvenile mass murder in American schools is the job of police officers, school teachers, and concerned parents May 5, 2010
https://www.policeone.com/school-violence/articles/2058168-Active-shooters-in-schools-The-enemy-is-denial/
This isn’t about guns, this isn’t about ‘security.’
This is about trust of our fellow citizens, both young and old.
It’s gone.
Fifty years of liberalism has sure its consequences, don’t it?
(Btw, if anybody thinks this this meltdown of society wasn’t an intended wet dream by the left, pull your head out of your behind. Many, many of us saw it coming long ago.)
Cloward–Piven.
“[D]eeper and politically more telling conflicts would take place within the Democratic coalition…Whites – both working class ethnic groups and many in the middle class – would be aroused against the ghetto poor, while liberal groups, which until recently have been comforted by the notion that the poor are few… would probably support the movement. Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute as welfare rolls mounted and the strains on local budgets became more severe.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy
It’s working even better than they thought. (Thanks, Crying Boehners.)
There is an answer: tough love. VERY tough love.
“Tough love is an expression used when someone treats another person harshly or sternly with the intent to help them in the long run.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love
For some, tough love isn’t enough. For the likes of klinton, soros, obama, comey, etc – prison is the only answer.
” For the likes of klinton, soros, obama, comey, etc – prison is the only answer.”
Disagree.
A short rope and a tall tree is what’s needed.
1st, You sure don’t know much history. The difference is that in the past, people didn’t have easy access to AR-15 style weapons.
2nd – why bother disputing you? You could trip in the street and rationalize it into a leftist plot.
I keep waiting for the day you post a factual, coherent, or intelligent comment.
Today obviously ain’t it
I don’t have to make it a leftist plot. The simple fact is that some want to concentrate on the tool used (granted not very bright people), instead of the real issues.
The entire “the founders didn’t consider modern firearms” or “didn’t consider AR-15’s” argument is asinine, intelligent, and disingenuous. The founders wrote the 2nd amendment to ensure that the populace would have access to “commonly available firearms” which at that time were black powder weapons. In other words the 2nd amendment was written to ensure that the populace could have the most deadly weapons available at the time.
These were smart men who realized that weapons would advance in fact they had advanced significantly just in the founders lifetimes. In fact the founders supported private ownership of cannon and warships.
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824
In fact this quote by Jefferson is very applicable to this situation.
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776
The problem is that schools are soft targets and Gun Free Zones kill. Basically these people chose these targets because they know that no one will shoot back. The possibility of catching a bullet in the ass changes that thought process. 98% of mass shootings happen in gun free zones.
Also, you do realize that in the realm of firearms there are much much more deadly weapons that these folks could use besides the AR-15? Well since your knowledge is limited to what the talking heads tell you to swallow you probably don’t.
One last quote for you.
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
Just because you chose slavery don’t force it on others.
Has the MFM blamed Trump yet?
Although if this dies away very quickly we’ll know for sure the guy was a registered democrat. But until then Ill just assume the media will blame this on the alt right racist hate trump voters.
Drudge has a headline where the murderer was inspired by isis.
And he was a communist:
https://www.infowars.com/report-florida-shooter-inspired-by-isis-allahu-akbar/
The Shooter was Pro Communist Possibly ANTIFA
samuel ezerzer Published on Feb 14, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBrCv3oEIu4
How did we ever get to the point of calling a criminal caught committing a crime “the alleged……”
There is no EASY fix to this problem but the number one attempt is a proven one that is working in my old profession. Airline pilots demanded and got a government program for at least one of the cockpit crew to be armed during all flights. It has worked very well. If the same were done in our “Gun free” zones and some teachers and administrators were required to be armed and trained then these sick bastards would know that their chances of fame and imaginary revenge would be in doubt from the start. Name any other danger in life where the answer to it is the total banning of that cause.Instead, use the tools at hand and tighten up on the entry to these schools.
Last night I received a robocall from Miami Dade Superintendent of Schools Alberto Carvalho about the shooting. He wanted to let us parents know that our children’s safety is important and that this morning there would be police officers at all the schools. Well, apart from the bullshit (I just dropped one of my kids at school and there was no police presence), what else do they do? Not today, but tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow?
What about YESTERDAY, February 14th?
I also just saw Broward’s superintended in the morning news. He was visibly emotional, and that’s understandable. But what the hell have they done all these years other than making sure our children and their teachers are 100% sitting ducks for deranged P.O.S. individuals like this nicolas cruz?
Now all the usual P.O.S. opportunistic S.O.B. gun control parrots are making the rounds again with their idiotic statements, disrespecting our intelligence with their lies, instead of addressing the real issues.
And now I go back to the two superintendents. I will not say, as I don’t think so, that they have any ill intentions, but they better cut the crap and answer the real questions:
– How come this individual, who had no business on campus, and who was EXPELLED from the school for his bad behavior, was so easily able to go inside, roam the school armed to the teeth?
– What does it take for the schools to address and actually discipline individuals like him, and keep them away from OUR children?
– What is it with all the self-congratulatory statements about drills and preparation when it was precisely their lame protocols that gave the shooter a vehicle to maximize casualties?
– When will the left and media (same thing) stop justifying, glorifying and downright advocating violence that fits their agenda?
– When will they stop punishing law abiding citizens and their children to protect criminals?
They better stop lying to us as if we were idiots.
And especially, the superintendents, the school boards and the politicians, better stop their hypocrite tears and start making changes, changes that work.
All these comments and all these simple solutions and the recognition of simple failures… and not one mention of the AR15. Did anyone know that the framers of the 2nd just knew that everyone should have an AR15 in their closet so that we could fight the RedCoats when they returned. We know that they will never forget the loss of ’76. We must be prepared! And don’t we all know duck hunters and deer hunters and moose hunters and varmit killers that would rather use their handy and trusted AR15 instead of a .22 or a 30.06 or a 12g. Doesn’t it make one so sad so very sad that Remington is filing CH7.
How about a 1908 Remington rifle? Or Winchester Model 10? Nice hunting rifles before the days of military assault rifles. Oops…. No difference between them and AR-15.
Here’s a great idea: why don’t we just ban guns from school? That way, even if someone has an AR-15, he can’t shoot it on campus!
Laws: criminals don’t follow them. Hello, is this thing on?
Ban AR-15 and there is no logical reason to try to ban all semi-automatics. Good luck cleaning up after that bloodbath.
About the AR-15 and its myriad clones.
No AR-15 rifle has ever loaded itself and attacked anyone. In fact, it is technically a carbine, as it is shorter than a standard battle rifle and uses a less powerful cartridge than a battle or hunting rifle. And, it is not as robust a design as several other semi-automatic carbines. About all that it has going for it is a large magazine capacity. And, most importantly, an AR-15 rifle does not en globe its user in a magical suit of impervious body armor. An AR-15 user can be rendered harmless with a pistol, knife, club, chair, or well placed fist, especially if one gets to the rear of the muzzle.
Cruz could have done as much, or more, damage if he was using a good quality sword. Why? Because no one mounted a defense against his attack. Then of course there is the ubiquitous Malatov Cocktail, the ammonium nitrate car or truck bomb and other weapons.
Now, approximately 4-5 million AR-15 style rifles are currently owned in the US. Approximately 300 murders a year are committed with rifles, including the AR-15. This is in contrast to the 6000 homicides which are committed with pistols each year. The AR-15 is not a problem. Blaming it is simply the easiest way to avoid actually admitting that certain threats exist and have to be addressed in a realistic manner.
But the “formula” has been set. Use AR, shoot kids (anybody) and you have celebrity status from the MSM and (false) adoration from the banners….”you are somebody” in this world.
At least for this case, I suggest returning to public hangings… not the short drop-quick stop version but the twisting in the wind jerking slow type. Add derision through the whole process as there is no question this guy did it. No decorum. Be nice to have the person hooded at all times so no one sees him…. and no hugs of empathy from the public defender!
Seung-Hui Cho used a 9mm GLOCK and a .22lr Walther to kill 33 people and wound 17 more at Virginia Tech. No AR used there.
The media and the liberals [who are the people responsible for refusing to harden gun-free zones such as schools] are terrified at the thought of people having access to a firearm which they can use to effectively defend themselves and their loved one from assault from large groups, such as Antifa and other thugs. And remember, no matter how many rounds you have in the magazine of YOUR firearm, it only take one round from the firearm of another to end your murderous spree RFN.
One of the reasons why school shooters and others use military style semi-automatic carbines in these incidents is because it allows them to live out the scenes that they see in the movies. It is cosplay with deadly weapons. However, as we have seen in such incidents as the Aurora Colorado shooting, these people are neither very well trained in the use of these weapons, nor do they pick efficient accessories for their weapons. These people are only dangerous because their attacks are unopposed.
Very nice. Finger painting in blood. And strawmen at that. Your mom and dad will put this one on the fridge for sure.
They were pretty dang clear that the point was to have an army on hand, and for that army to already have their weapons, AKA, ‘arms.’
They’d probably be rather pissed and find it an unexpected thing that there are any weapons meant for individual use that civilians don’t have.
Darn!
I’ve read the Second Amendment 5 times in the last 5 minutes and I still can’t find where it mentions “duck hunters and deer hunters and moose hunters and varmit killers”.
Words like liberty, limited accountable government, fear of standing armies (alphabet soup agency armies)… all passe. The sheriff implored that this was a local law enforcement issue..but everything must be federalized.