Teacher’s Funeral Instructions If He Died in a Shooting: ‘Don’t Talk About the Hero Stuff’

Scott Beigel, a geography teacher who died saving lives during the Florida school shooting, told his fiancé “don’t talk about the hero stuff” if he ever died in a school shooting.

As mourners gathered Sunday in Boca Raton, Florida to lay Scott Beigel, 35, to rest after he was killed during the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, his fiancé, Gwen Gossler, revealed that he had given her instructions for his eulogy, the Daily Mail reports.

“‘Promise me if this ever happens to me, you will tell them the truth – tell them what a jerk I am, don’t talk about the hero stuff,’” Gossler reiterated the words that Beigel had told her while watching news coverage of another school shooting.

“OK, Scott, I did what you asked,” Gossler continued. “‘Now I can tell the truth. You are an amazingly special person. You are my first love and my soulmate.”

Beigel died after confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, entered the Parkland, Florida high school just minutes before dismissal on Wednesday, Feb. 14. Armed with an AR-15, which he had legally purchased, multiple magazines of ammunition, a gas mask, and smoke grenades, Cruz pulled the fire alarm and opened fire as students began piling into the hallways.

According to multiple students, Beiegel, a geography teacher at the school, unlocked his door when the shooting began and instructed panicking students in the hallway to hide inside his classroom. Once the students were safely inside he attempted to lock the door but was hit by a bullet.

The funerals for Alex Schachter, 14, and Jaime Guttenberg, 14, were also held Sunday. Both funerals had to be held in a Fort Lauderdale convention center to accommodate the thousands of mourners.

Cruz, who confessed to the shooting that took the lives of 17 students and adults and injured more than a dozen, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.