‘I’m f.....g scared right now’: Stoneman Douglas High School students, teachers tell of terror
HARROWING footage and eyewitness accounts have emerged of the moment students and teachers took cover when a gunman shot up their Florida school.
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STUDENTS and teachers were watching the clock. It was just minutes away from the Stoneman Douglas High School’s hometime bell.
Then the fire alarm sounded.
The response was confusion.
What?
Now?
Again?
The massive high school campus of 3200 students had just gone through such a drill earlier that morning.
But the routine was fresh in their minds.
Teachers began to organise their students for evacuation as they sought details of the emergency. Some began filing out towards their designated assembly points.
Then, two minutes later, gun shots rang out through the three-storey 1200 building at the heart of the campus.
In the words of those who were there, everything changed.
OPENING MOMENTS
Student Alexandra Robinson told ABC News her class was confused when the fire alarm sounded because they had already gone through a drill.
The principal voice’s then rang over the intercom — ordering students to evacuate.
Another student told news site WSVN they thought it was another fire drill: “But then word started going around that it was shots and not just like something else, everyone just started running towards the canal.”
Student Jeiella Dodoo told CBS News that she and her schoolmates evacuated their classroom calmly after hearing what they thought had been a routine fire alarm.
“The alarm went off so we had to evacuate from our classes,” she said. “Then we heard gunshots.
“I heard about six gunshots,” she said, “and then some people started running and then everyone started running because we were like ‘If it’s real, then just run.’”
“All of a sudden there was a really loud noise…..people are crying the closet,” a student texted newssite CBS4.
Video from inside Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School as the shooting was happening. #Parkland #ParklandShooting pic.twitter.com/VpzpGyaBQq
— Based Monitored 🇺🇸🇮🇪 (@BasedMonitored) February 14, 2018
Maths teacher Jim Gard told the Miami Herald: “Six kids ran back into my room, and I locked the door, turned out the lights and had the kids go to the back of the room ... I told the kids to hang in there, it may still be a drill.”
Michael Katz, 15, told ABC news he heard a loud bang. At first he thought it was a regular garbage truck pick-up.
“It was really loud. Then I heard it again ... Then I heard frantic screaming. I’ve never heard such loud screams in my life. Then we realised there was a shooting at my school.
“Then I head more and more shots, and I heard banging next door,” Michael said. “My first instinct was to text my mom and dad and tell them that I loved them in case I was killed. Then I called 911. I just said there’s an active shooter at Stoneman Douglass and hung up because I heard footsteps coming back toward our classroom.”
PARENTS IN PANIC
Len Murray’s 17-year-old son, a junior at the school, sent his parents a chilling text: “Mom and Dad, there have been shots fired on campus at school.
“There are police sirens outside. I’m in the auditorium and the doors are locked.”
Those words came at 2:30pm Wednesday. A few minutes later, he texted again: “I’m fine.”
Murray, who raced to the school, added: “I’m scared for the other parents here. You can see the concern in everybody’s faces. Everybody is asking, ‘Have you hard from your child yet?’”
Denise Perez says she managed to speak to her daughter Marsiel. She said she was safe and was surrounded by armed marshals.
“Just stay calm, baby,” her mother told her.
Listte Rozenblat is the mother of another student: “My daughter texted us sometime around 2:30 or so. I had unfortunately missed a call and a text. She texted my husband and she said there was a shooter in the school. He told her to remain calm and everything’s going to be fine. We called the school to verify the account and unfortunately, it was confirmed, so he just took off in the car but he couldn’t get in — he couldn’t get through the school.”
CLASSROOM CARNAGE
Milan Parodie, 15, told The Daily Beast she had been evacuated from her classroom before she heard shots. “Everyone got scared and started running away. Teachers were running, and that’s when I got scared. I’ve never seen a teacher run,” she said.
Others were stuck inside.
Students throughout the school immediately took to social media. One video captures the bark of gunfire amid shouts of “Holy shit! Oh my God!” It then turns to a laptop with bullet holes punched through its still glowing screen.
“He was shooting through the glass in the door,” student Matthew Walker told ABC News.
“It was really bad ... There were bullet holes everywhere. Everyone was freaking out. I did not see the shooter, but he did shoot through my class. He couldn’t get inside because the door was locked.”
Walker has a video on his phone from inside the classroom during the attack. Students could be heard screaming. One yelled “Oh, my God!” as gunshots rang out in the background.
“He was just going from class to class, just shooting at random kids,” Walker said.
At the sound of shots, some teachers locked doors and instructed their pupils to hide wherever possible.
Alexandra Robinson told ABC News she realised it was a shooting when she heard “two pops”. But she not figure out how far away they were.
So she and her two friends ran for their lives.
At one point, on the school grounds, they stopped running. But a security guard shouted at them to keep going.
“That’s when I knew this was, like, a real shooting thing,” Robinson said.
She and her friends fled to the nearby Walmart store to get away from the campus.
Nicholas Coke was studying English when the fire alarm went off. He said people began running, jumping fences and hiding in classrooms.
“I wasn’t going to stick around and find out what was going on,” he told the Miami Herald.
Another student said there were “SWAT teams everywhere with big guns, cops everywhere, helicopters.”
SHOOTER EVACUATED WITH OTHER STUDENTS
Witness Zackary Wells told local media he knew who it was: “We got a picture of him and we were actually just sending it around to different officers and whatever, what contacts we had to get the photo out to them so they could get him apprehended fairly quick ...
“One of my friends said that he used to follow him on social media accounts where he would regularly post videos of him with guns and knives and things like that.
“Yes, he was a former student. One of my teachers said something about him either transferring or being kicked out of the school, I’m not sure which it was but yes, he did used to go to our school.”
Wells said: “From what I heard, he dropped his rifle and he made his way out with the other students that were being evacuated. He walked on over to Wyndham Lake ...”
Local resident Michael Nembhard told The Associated Press he was in his garage watching TV news coverage of the shooting when he heard a police officer repeatedly yelling, “get on the ground!”
Nembhard says he looked up to see a teenage boy on the ground about 100 meters away with an officer pointing a gun at him. The officer stood over the boy until other officers arrived, handcuffed him and led him away.
TERRIBLE RELIEF
With police in the buildings and the sound of gunfire over, students began to be evacuated from their rooms.
But the scene ahead of them was terrible.
The dead were everywhere.
One student video shows SWAT police entering the classrooms, shouting “Put your phones away! Put your phones away!”
Parodie said one of her friends had pulled the body of a dead classmate on top of herself as she lay on the first floor of the school’s senior students building.
“‘I almost died, I got grazed, thank God I covered myself with someone’s body. I’m traumatized’,” Milan quoted her friend as messaging.
My little brother just sent me this video of the swat team evacuating his classroom at stoneman douglas. So scary but glad he's safe. @nbc6 @CBSMiami @NBCNews @wsvn @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/XNTtra221q
— Melody (@Melody_Ball) February 14, 2018
Walker said: “When the police were escorting me out of the building, there was a dead guy ... on the floor next to me.”
Katz said the gunfire had lasted about five minutes.
Then he heard police yelling in the halls.
“My teacher didn’t want to open the door at first, then we heard them say, ‘Police, open up!’
“We moved in a single line, then lying around the wall from my room there were two dead bodies on the ground,” he said. “There was a boy and a girl. They were both extremely pale and bleeding.”
His class was led out of the school and across the street with their hands in the air.
“I heard my dad say, ‘Look over here,’ and I just sprinted to the car and jumped in,” Katz said.
AFTERMATH
With the immediate panic over, parents, staff and police have begun to grieve — and demand answers.
How could this be allowed to happen?
A teacher at the school told the Miami Herald that staff had been warned Cruz, 19, posed a potential threat. The school administration is believed to have sent out an email warning teachers that Cruz had made threats against students in the past and that he should not be allowed in the school.
Stoneman Douglas student: We used to joke that Nicolas Cruz "would be the one to shoot up the school." At least 15 now confirmed dead. https://t.co/n8iEBKJRYL pic.twitter.com/KveyfPNRzx
— WSB-TV (@wsbtv) February 14, 2018
“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” said math teacher Jim Gard, who said the former student suspected in the shootings had been in his class last year. “There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
But Isabella Gomez told MSNBC what is on the mind of many who lived through the experience: “I don’t want to go in that building ever again ... I don’t want to go back there. It’s not the same.”
Originally published as ‘I’m f.....g scared right now’: Stoneman Douglas High School students, teachers tell of terror
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