Students and teachers spoke about their experience inside Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School during the third deadliest shooting in American history.
Cristina Vega, a student, told 7 News Miami that returning to the school will be extremely difficult.
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“I don’t want to come back to this school,” she said. “I can’t go up the stairs because up the stairs there was just trails of blood. Our teacher, right there in the corner. You just see the bullet and the blood on the wall.”
Another student said that he knew something was off when the second fire alarm went off.
“We were just in class doing notes and talking about a project, and the fire alarm goes for the second time in the same day,” he said, “which is weird, so we all just go out to the field like we’re supposed to, and then I heard gunshots. You could tell it was definitely gunshots.”
One student said he knows the shooter. “He’s been a troubled kid, and he’s always had a certain amount of issues going on. He shot guns because he felt it gave him, I guess, an exhilarating feeling.”
The student went on to say the suspect had shown him pictures of guns on his phone.
“I stayed clear of him most of the time. My time in alternate school, I did not want to be with him at all because I didn’t want to cause any conflict with him, because of the impression he gave off,” said the student.
After the horrific shooting, the Broward County Public School district announced closures for the rest of the week. “Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will be closed Thursday, February 15 and Friday, February 16, 2018, (for the rest of this week),” the school district tweeted Wednesday evening. “All school activities are also cancelled.”
Nikolas Cruz, 19, reportedly began shooting around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, minutes before the school day’s dismissal. Seventeen people were killed during the shooting.
Using an AR-15 rifle, Cruz reportedly pulled the school’s fire alarm then opened fire as kids began filing out of classrooms.
“We all thought it was a fire drill because we had one previously today,” a student told Fox 6. “And we thought it was, so no one was that nervous, but then word started going around that it was shots and not just, like, something else, everyone just started running towards the canal.”
One student managed to live tweet the shooting, while others posted videos to social media from inside classrooms. Police and SWAT arrived on the scene and helped many of the students out of the building, while others quickly fled on foot without being seen by Cruz.
