Florida School Shooting: ‘No Words’ as 17 Die in a Barrage of Bullets
The massacre called to mind the country’s two mass shootings
that have come to be known by the name of the schools: Columbine, the high school outside Denver where 12 students and a teacher were killed in 1999; and Sandy Hook, the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., where 20 students and six adults were shot dead in 2012.
Mr. Gard said that after the shooting, he learned from several students
that Mr. Cruz was obsessed with a girl at the school to the point of “stalking her,” a point the authorities did not raise in news briefings near the scene.
By the end of the rampage, Mr. Cruz had killed 12 people inside the school
and three outside it, including someone standing on a street corner, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
PARKLAND, Fla. — A heavily armed young man barged into his former high school about an hour northwest of Miami on Wednesday, opening fire on terrified students
and teachers and leaving a death toll of 17 that could rise even higher, the authorities said.
Sheriff Israel said law enforcement officials had already discovered material on Mr. Cruz’s social media accounts that was “very, very disturbing.”
Jim Gard, a math teacher at the school, said Mr. Cruz was in his class in 2016 and appeared to be a “quiet” student.
The shootings have become common enough that many schools, including Stoneman Douglas High,
run annual drills in which students practice huddling in classrooms behind locked doors.
