Birthday Bonus Episode: Episode 44: Parkland School Shooting: The Deadliest Mass Shooting at a High School in US History

IT'S THE ODDER'S 2nd BIRTHDAY!
That means we celebrate with the Birthday Bonus Episode! Featuring the first episode in which I both cry and sing!
Today we are taking a dark walk down the history of mass shootings in america to the doors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in a Miami suburban town where a 19 year old with a history of disturbing behavior will committed the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US History to date. Today on The Odder, we will be discussing the Parkland School Shooting, a horrific tragedy that claimed the lives of 17 students and staff and left a gouge on the nation. Let’s go. 

Episode Warnings for gun violence, death of minors, and graphic content

Want to request your own personalized episode? Email me at theodderpod@gmail.com!

Follow us on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/theodderpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theodderpodcast
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theodderpod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theodderpodcast

Please rate and review!

Music Credit:
"Bittersweet" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Anguish" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Constance" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Invariance" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Main Theme:
"Dream Catcher" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

1. Hello and welcome to The Odder Podcast. I’m your host Madison Paige and today we are taking a dark walk down the history of mass shootings in america to the doors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in a Miami suburban town where a 19 year old with a history of disturbing behavior will committed the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US History to date. Today on The Odder, we will be discussing the Parkland School Shooting, a horrific tragedy that claimed the lives of 17 students and staff and left a gouge on the nation. Let’s go. 
2. Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday The Odder, Happy Birthday to you! That’s right! It’s here! The Odder is now two years old. My sweet little black eyed bundle of cryptids and true crime is now walking and talking and can feed itself with a spoon. Another wonderful year has passed of us spending time together investigating all the weird, terrifying, strange, and just plain Odd things that life has to offer. I’m so pleased to be here with you guys still and the continued enjoyment has allowed me to keep up this little hobby of mine. Thank you to all the Odders who have been here since the beginning, all those that have joined on, and all those that are new around here, we really can’t thank you enough. Here is to many more years of Odd! 
3. Fun Facts from our second year of The Odder: the most listened to episode was Episode 25: The Poisoned Cheesecake: The Viktoria Nasyrova Case. The Longest Episode was Episode 29: Herb Baumeister AKA The I-70 Strangler at 45 minutes and the shortest was Episode 38: The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp: Psychic Capital of the World at 13 minutes. The episode with the most social media interaction was Episode 37: Missing and Unsolved: Tara Calico. Both March and August managed to snag three episodes each and tied for our busiest months and my personal favorite episode of the year was Episode 28: Kibbles and Human Bits: How Likely are Your Pets to Eat You? Definitely check some of these highlighted ones out to reminisce and enjoy the Odder’s second year. 
4. Well, as you might have guessed, this is a birthday bonus episode. That means that you will still get your regularly scheduled program as well. Which is actually tomorrow. So after you enjoy yourself today, make sure to come back again to get a whole new helping. Head on over to tiktok, instagram, facebook, or twitter and leave the odder a nice little “Happy Birthday” while you're at it. 
5. Do I sound like one of those people that makes an instagram for their pet cause I kind of feel like one?
6. Anyway, The Odder was, unintentionally born on Valentines day. For the bonus episode, I thought we’d talk about another incident that happened on Valentine's day. We’ve never taken a dip into mass shootings or tragedies but I thought we’d give it a try and so today we are going to talk about what happened on February 14th, 2018. Now we are smacking a big ole warning on this episode. We are going to be talking about a difficult subject today and it may be uncomfortable for some listeners. There will be discussions of the death of minors, gun violence, and school shootings. Be aware of your limits and if that is not something that you are up for today, no worries, we will catch you tomorrow instead. 
7. And with that, let us talk about the Parkland Shooting.
8. At 2:19 pm, an Uber pulled up to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. This highschool was located in an affluent neighborhood 30 miles outside of Fort Lauderdale. It was Valentine's day and the students were getting ready to be dismissed for the afternoon in about 20 minutes. Many of them had plans to hang out with friends, go out on dates, or just enjoy themselves on the chocolate centered holiday. 
9. Out of the Uber steps a 19 year old former student. He is carrying a backpack and a rifle case. Heading across campus, he is spotted by a monitor heading purposefully towards Building 12. The monitor is named Andrew Medina and is an unarmed baseball coach who has been riding around in a golf cart and unlocking gates to get ready for the dismissal bell. Seeing the strange man who he recognized as someone who had attended the school previously and had had behavioral issues when he did, someone he had jokingly agreed with a colleague before was most likely to shoot up a school, he radioed his colleague to inform him of the former student and ask what they should do. While seeing a man with a rifle case is unsettling, they are not sure if they have the authority to call a Code Red Lockdown. According to the schools policies, a lockdown cannot be ordered unless a gun is directly seen or shot have been heard. 
10. 2:21 PM, the former student enters building 12 which is a three story structure that houses 30 classrooms. At this time of day, it is typically at a capacity of 900 students and 30 teachers. A second campus monitor named David Taylor receives the radio from Medina and encounters the man who he witnesses ducking into a stairwell. Taylor does not confront him and instead turns around and heads into a different stairwell at the opposite end of the hallway. He later states he intended to use it to intercept the former student on the second floor. 
11.  In the stairwell, the man removes the rifle case from his shoulder and unhouses a AR-15-style Semi-automatic rifle along with multiple magazines on which he has scratched swastikas. As he is loading the rifle, he comes face to face with a freshemen student who was exiting the stairway named Chris McKenna. Holding the weapon as he loaded it up, he told McKenna that he better get out of here because “It was about to get messy”. The freshmen took his advice and ran to alert Aaron Feis, another campus monitor and a football coach. Feis has a radio but does not call a code red even after being told of a man with a gun. 
12. 1 minute 44 seconds after his arrival on campus, he then entered a hallway and began firing.
13. The shooter kills his first three victims in the hallway of the first floor. They are 14 year old Martin Duque, 15 year old Luke Hoyer, and 14 year old Gina Montalto. 
14. David Taylor heard the shot being fired and hid in a janitor closet to survive the attack. 
15. The shooter is unchallenged as he moves through the first floor and shoots through the windows at people in his line of sight. He kills his next six victims this way. They are 14 year old Alyssa Alhadeff, 17 year old Nicholas Dworet, 14 year old Alaina Petty, 17 year old Helena Ramsay, 14 year old Alex Schachter, and 16 year old Carmen Schentrup. 
16. In these classrooms, there were no hard corners. A failure on the part of the school district to require these areas where students could have hidden from the line of sight of a gunman looking through the doorway would have saved more lives. At the time, although two security experts had advised Stoneman Douglas teachers and administrators to have these spaces, only two teachers in building 12 had done so. Most classrooms had desks or furniture in the way.
17. 2:22 PM the first 911 call goes out to a Coral Springs operator informing them there is a shooter in the school. The transcript plays where a female voice can be heard saying “we are at mary douglas highschool and there is a shooter on the campus” followed by the sound of gunshots. The operator tries to get the person to talk to them but there are no further words from her before the phone disconnects. 
18. Even though several students have been killed and the shooter is continuing his advance through the building, a Code Red and lockdown have still not been called. This is a fatal mistake when a fire alarm is set off. Now it is debated whether the shooter did this as a way to draw out more victims or if this was a fluke in the system but this caused mass confusion as a drill had actually already happened earlier that morning. Students and teachers began to stream out of their classrooms and right into the path of the shooter.
19. It is at this time that Deputy Scot Peterson, the school resource officer and the only other man on campus who is armed meets up with Medina, the campus monitor who first spotted Cruz. They get into the golf cart and race to Building 12.
20. While this is happening the 911 operator in Coral Springs is on call with the Sheriff’s office of Broward County. He communicates with the office that he has talked to someone and that over the phone has heard 5 to 6 shots in two different bursts over the line. This disjointed 911 system works to slow law enforcement response. 
21. 49 year old Athletic Director and campus monitor Chris Hixon who is present at Building 12 runs through a pair of double doors and attempts to confront the shooter. He is shot and crawls to a nearby doorway to take cover. The shooter finds him again 30 seconds later and shoots him again.
22. 2:23 PM Deputy Peterson arrives at the east side of Building 12. He draws his gun but does not enter the building. Over his police radio, he informs dispatch he can hear firecrackers or possible shots fired. 37 year old Aaron Feis who had been alerted by the student from the stairwell about the gun enters building 12 from the west stairwell and comes face to face with the shooter. He is then shot and killed. 
23. It has been 3 minutes and 23 seconds since the shooter arrived on campus. He has covered the first floor of the building. He has killed 11 and wounded 13. He is moving up to the second floor. 
24. The hallway here is empty. Some teachers have heard the gunfire and tried to save their students by covering the windows and huddling them into corners out of sight. The shooter attempts to shoot into two of the ten rooms but no one is hit. 
25. Deputy Peterson is still outside and has taken cover between building 7 and 8. He radios for a nearby intersection to be blocked off. He still has not entered the building. He is still the only other person on campus with a firearm. 
26. 2:24 PM. Students on the third floor are not able to hear the shots and believe that it is a fire drill. They are crowded in the hallways until the first of the gunfire on the second floor alerts them to the danger and they frantically try to return to the classrooms. Social Studies teacher Ernie Rospierski directs students back into his classroom until he is accidently locked out with his keys inside, leaving him and several students stranded. The shooter is heading to the third floor. 
27. As he enters the third floor, twenty students and staff still remain in the hallway and he opens fire. 35 year old Scott Beigel, a geography teacher, is holding open his classroom door to usher in students for cover when he is shot and killed. 
28. Broward Sheriff’s deputy Michael Kratz has arrived at the school and is blocking traffic near the football field. 
29. 5:00 minutes since the shooter has arrived on campus, a Code Red and lockdown is finally declared on campus by monitor Elliot Bonner after he finds Feis' body and hears gunshot. Unarmed, Bonner leaves the scene. 
30. 2:25 PM, confusion about the location of the shooter is thrown into the mix when Deputy Kratz reports hearing gunshots by the football field over his radio. Back in building 12, the schools decision to lock restrooms due to students vaping has left those in need of refuge trapped outside. 18 year old Meadow Pollack and 14 year old Cara Loughran are shot and killed huddled together outside a locked classroom door. 17 year old Joaquin Oliver is killed after he is unable to take refuge in a locked bathroom and also killed. 
31. Social Studies teacher Rospierski urges 10 students towards a stairwell as the shooter fires towards them. He strikes 14 year old Jaime Guttenberg and 15 year old Peter Wang, killing them both. Rospierski then holds the door closed from inside the stairwell to prevent the shooter from entering and further attacking the students. 
32. 5 minutes and 36 seconds after arriving on campus. Deputies Peterson and Kratz have still not entered building 12 despite being the only other armed people on campus. The shooter has killed six and wounded four on the third floor. 
33. Rospierski is successful in preventing his advance and the shooter heads to the nearby teachers lounge. He attempts to shoot the glass in order to aim from the windows and target the student and teachers as they flee the campus. However, the glass is hurricane proof due to the schools proximity to Miami and the bullets are unable to break through. The shooter is unable to strike anyone from the windows. 
34. Deputy Peterson orders a school lockdown from his radio. He still does not enter the building where the shooter is located. 
35. 2:26 PM, Four more broward deputies arrive on campus but remain in their cars. They can hear the gunshots as the shooter attempts to shoot out the glass. Since Columbine happened in 1999, it has been standard practice for officers to rush towards gunshots and neutralize the killer however the deputies did not do this. Broward Sheriff Scott Israel would later state he had personally changed the department policy to say that deputies may choose whether to rush in or not. 
36. 2:27 PM, Sergeant Brian Miller arrives north of Building 12. He is now the highest ranking officer on the scene however he does not take control or leave his car. He puts on a bullet proof vest and takes cover behind his car. He is not active on his radio for 10 minutes. Eight armed deputies are now at the school. All fail to rush into Building 12 to stop the killer. The shooter is still on the loose.
37. The final five gunshots, made inside the teachers lounge, can be heard on the body cam of Deputy Josh Stambaugh. Who had driven his car to the other end of the campus on the Sawgrass Expressway overlooking the school. The final shot is heard at 2:27 pm. 
38. 8:00 minutes after the shooter's arrival on campus, he strips off his rifle vest, discards the AR-15 in the stairwell, races through the building, and blends into the fleeing students, escaping amongst the survivors he had previously tried to kill. 
39. 2:28 pm. Police are still convinced that the shooter is in the building. Deputy Peterson tells deputies over the radio to stay at least 500 feet away from the building. Later, some Broward deputies present at the shooting would struggle to recall when they had active shooter training or what they had learned. 
40. Finally, Assistant Principal Jeff Morford and school security Officer Kelvin Greenlead enter the school's camera room to attempt to find the shooter. However, the deputies didn’t realize the video had a delay of 20 minutes. This led to them believing that the shooter was still active in the building. They began to search for the shooter and delayed aid to injured students. 
41. 2:29 PM, Broward Sheriff’s Captain Jan Jordan, who headed the Parkland District, arrived at the school’s administration building and attempted to coordinate the officers. However, the radio system has technical issues and she is left struggling to hold communication. A command post for the officers is not set up. This is a mistake that was committed by the agency previously the year before after a mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport. 
42. 2:32 PM, the shooting stopped five minutes ago. The police officers have finally entered the building. Four Coral Springs officers enter through the west doors where they come across Chris Hixon. They pull him out of the building and load him onto a golf cart in an attempt to help him. He will not survive. 
43. The Coral Springs officers, as opposed to the Broward county officers, are clear in their training to run towards gunfire. Coral Springs Officer Raymond Kerner, the school resource officer at nearby J.P. Taravella High School, would later tell investigators “every time you hear a shot go off it could potentially be a kid getting killed or anybody getting killed for that matter.”
44. 2:33 PM. Officers still do not know that the shooter has left the building. Captain Jordan orders a perimeter established around the school; however this practice was abolished after Columbine. She still does not call for her officers to attempt to go find the shooter. 
45. 2:34 PM. Deputy Peterson informs a Coral Springs officer that the shooter is on the second or third floor. In reality the shooter has long left the premises. Deputy Peterson, despite being onsite since before gunfire rang out, has still not entered the building once. 
46. 14 minutes and 33 seconds after the gunman arrived on campus, 6 minutes after he left the building, and one minute and 45 seconds after Coral Springs officers entered building 12, the first Broward county Deputy finally entered the building. 
47. 2:36 PM. 18 officers, mostly Coral Springs, go through the building and attempt to locate the shooter. 
48. 2:37 PM. The command post is still not established. This means deputies do not know who is in charge or who to report to. Broward County Lieutenant Stephan O’Neill takes command of the response after noting the lack of direction from supervisors. He would later say Captain Jordan had a “dream-like” nature to her speech and that she “was not engaged with the problem.". He works to keep the roads by the school clear for more responding vehicles and to create an area where officers can stage during the response. However, this also slows the police response into Building 12.
49. 2:40 PM. Officers begin evacuating the survivors of Building 12. 
50. 2:53 PM. Assistant Principal Morford is still watching the security cameras in the school. He alerts officers that the shooter is leaving the third floor and heading to the second. They still do not know that the video feed has a twenty minute delay. They incorrectly confirm that the video is live. In reality, the shooter has left the campus. He's at a nearby Walmart and has ordered a drink at Subway. He is even conversing with fellow students who have taken refuge there. Some of whom he has murdered the siblings of. 
51. The shooter leaves Walmart. He walks to a nearby McDonalds. He will only stay there for a minute before leaving. 
52. 2:57 PM. Officers advance to the third floor. They find the shooter's gun, vest and the body of Jaime Guttenberg. They still believe the gunman is present and are experiencing radio issues. 
53. 3:02 PM. The video surveillance in the school is confirmed to be on a 20 minute delay. The officers now know that the shooter has long left the premises. Sargent Rossman has known for seven minutes longer than the other but he has not broadcast it over the radio. 
54. 3:11 PM. Deputy Peterson finally leaves the place he has remained since the shooting started. He sheltered there for nearly 48 minutes while the shooter entered the building, massacred the inhabitants, left, and the building was then investigated by other officers. 
55. 3:17 PM. It has been an hour since the shooting began. Officers finally enter the last room in Building 12. The shooter is gone. 17 People have been killed. 17 people were injured. This is the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S History to date. 
56. Who the shooter was however was not a mystery to the school. As you recall, he had been seen by multiple campus monitors who recognized him. After speaking to police, they were dispatched to find the student. 
57. 3:41 PM, Police find and arrest 19 year old Nikolas Cruz, 2 miles from the school in the Wyndham Lakes neighborhood of Coral Springs as the suspected shooter. He is first taken to a hospital emergency room for labored breathing but 40 minutes later, Cruz is returned to police custody and booked into Broward County Jail. 
58. SWAT paramedics had entered the building and while additional paramedics from the local Fire and Rescue department repeatedly requested to enter the building and help the wounded, the Broward Sheriff’s office denied them even after Cruz was in custody. 
59. Twelve victims died inside the buildings, three died just outside on school premises, and two died in the hospital. The last victim to remain hospitalized was 15 year old Anthony Borges. Called “the real Iron Man”, Borges was shot five times when he used his body to barricade a door of a classroom where twenty students hid. After he was released from the hospital, Borges was honored with a humanitarian award at the 2018 BET awards. 
60. In the wake of such a shocking incident, many people struggled not only to come to terms with what happened but why. Who was Nikolas Cruz, why did he do this, and why did nobody stop him?
61. Cruz was born September 24th, 1998 in Margate, Florida. He was adopted at birth but his father died in 2004 and his mother passed away on November 1st, 2017, just three months before the shooting. Since Cruz had been made an orphan, he had been living with friends and relatives, has enrolled in a GED program, and is working at the local Dollar Tree. Cruz is known for his behavioral issues, something that has followed his academic career since preschool. He had been transferred between schools six times in three years as part of a process that the schools used to offer students alternate solutions to instances of misbehavior or violence instead of reporting them to law enforcement. A former classmate of Cruz stated that he had difficulties with anger management and often joked about guns and gun violence which included threatening to shoot up various establishments. In September 2016, Cruz was investigated by the Florida Department of Children and Families after he posted snapchat photos where he cut both his arms and claimed he was planning to buy a gun. It was at this time that a school resource officer had suggested he undergo an involuntary psychiatric examination or what is known as a Baker Act. While his guidance counselors agreed to this, a mental institution did not as they had concluded he was "at low risk of harming himself or others' '. Previously he had received mental health treatment but had not had any in the year leading up to the shooting. 
62.  It would come out through state investigators that Cruz was reported to suffer from depression, autism, and ADHD. However, this would be disputed by psychologist Frederick M. Kravitz who would testify that Cruz was never diagnosed with autism. 
63. CNN utilized a public records request to obtain the office log for the sheriff’s department after Sheriff Scott Israel claimed that they had received 23 calls about Cruz during the previous decade. This report, however, showed that from 2008 to 2017, 45 calls came through that office about Cruz, his brother and his family home. These calls included a February 2016 anonymous tip where Cruz threatened to shoot up the school and one in November 2017 that stated he might be a “school shooter in the making” and that he was collecting knives and guns. This was an easy claim to verify as Sheriff Scott Israel would later describe Cruz’s online profiles and accounts as “very, very disturbing” with pictures and posts of him holding a variety of weapons including large knives, a shotgun, a pistol, and a BB gun. Accounts were found linked to him that depicted extremist views that contained anti-black and anti-muslim slurs. 
64. Cruz was expelled from Stoneman Douglas High in 2017 after his disciplinary issues became too much. However, he could not be expelled completely from Broward County School System and had to be transferred again to alternate placement. 
65. In February 2017, Cruz legally purchased the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle used in the shooting from a Coral Springs gun store which was legal at the time in Florida for people as young as 18 as long as they passed the required background check. He had used a similar process to obtain several other firearms before such as a shotgun and several rifles. 
66. On September 24, 2017, a comment was posted to a Youtube video by a person with the username nikolas cruz that read “I'm going to be a professional school shooter”. The uploader of the video saw the comment and reported it to the FBI. According to agent Robert Lasky, the agency conducted database reviews but were unable to link the comment back to an individual. 
67. Less than two months before the shooting, on January 5th, 2018, the FBI received a tip on its Public Access Line from a person who was close to Cruz providing information on his gun ownership, desire to kill people, his erratic behavior, disturbing social media posts and that he had a high potential of conducting a school shooting. However, the tip line did not follow protocol and the information was not forwarded to the Miami Field Office. 
68. On May 30th, 2018, prosecutors released three videos that Cruz had recorded on his cellphone before the shootings where he describes his personal feelings, his enthusiasm and plans for the shooting, how much he hated people, and how this shooting would make him famous. 
69. The backlash that the Broward County Sheriff’s office received after their lack of response to all of the tips and calls, as well as their behavior during the events, led to many calling for Sheriff Scott Israel to step down. He rebuffed this and refused to resign, stating in an interview with CNN that  "I've given amazing leadership to this agency" but followed this up by denying responsibility for the actions of his deputies. 
70. He was later removed from his post by Governor Ron DeSantis and replaced with Gregory Tony. 
71. The Trial for Cruz was a painful but vindicating process for his victims family. On October 20, 2021, Cruz, now 24, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder, 17 counts of attempted murder and apologized for his crimes. The prosecution announced their intention to seek the death penalty and a four month trial was expected to commence in January 2022. However, Covid-19 caused several delays and the trial was not able to start until July 18, 2022. After months of testimony, a jury ruled on October 13, 2022 that Cruz was eligible for the death penalty but deadlocked on whether it should be imposed. This resulted in an automatic recommendation for a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. This was followed through with on November 2nd 2022. However, the Governor of Florida would later sign into law a bill that overturned the required unanimity needed to impose the death penalty as a result of Cruz’s sentencing. 
72. Throughout the trial, sentencing, and even the statements by the family members of the victims, Cruz was blank and nonreactive. He was emotionless behind glasses and a facemask which he did remove after the mother of victim Jamie Guttenberg called it disrespectful. However, his face did not change. 
73. He never provided a concrete explanation or reason for the shooting. 
74. While the official count of victims for the massacre is 17 there is of course the aftermath that has its own victim count. Survivors guilt and PTSD are very real things after incidents like mass shootings, and some of the students who had survived and lost friends would die by suicide following the incident. 
75. Families grieved and struggled to understand what had happened. They worked to cope with this sudden gaping hole in their lives where their children and loved ones had been. Memorials were planned, homages were put together. The school district offered grief counseling to students and families and the Florida Attorney General stated that the funeral and counseling fees would be covered by the state. 
76. Peter Wang, the student killed on the third floor was last seen in his JROTC Uniform holding the door open to the stairwell to help others flee when he was shot and killed, was so commended that a White House petition circulated, calling for him to be buried with full military honors. He was not the only one. At each of their funerals, Peter Wang, Alaina Petty, and Martin Duque were all posthumously honored by the U.S. Army with the ROTC Medal for Heroism. Wang was buried in his JROTC Blues uniform and on February 20, he was given a rare posthumous admission to the United States Military Academy.
77. Alyssa Alhadeff was the captain of the Parkland Soccer Club. On March 7, 2018, she was honored by the United States women's national soccer team prior to a game in Orlando. Her teammates and family were invited to the game and presented with official jerseys that featured her name.
78. Scott Beigel's family started a memorial fund in his name with the goal of funding summer camp tuition for students traumatized by school shootings as this had been a passion of Beigels. The memorial fund is majorly involved with events, including a 5K run, and partnered with Camp Fiver, which also gave the fund an honorary award.
79. Teacher Ivy Schamis, whose Holocaust class was fired into by Cruz, was presented with USC Shoah Foundation's inaugural Stronger Than Hate Educator Award in 2019. During her acceptance speech at the award ceremony, Schamis honored victims Nicholas Dworet and Helena Ramsay, who died in her class during the shooting.
80. However, the blatant lack of protection provided by law enforcement, the state, and the government as a whole took a shining spotlight in this case. They had been warned, over and over again, what a danger this man was, they had allowed laws to be in place that allowed someone to buy an AR-15 before they could even legally buy a beer, and they had delayed help and response during the incident itself. The community saw this and they demanded justice. 
81. The parents of victims Jaime Guttenberg and Alex Schachter sued firearm manufacturer American Outdoor Brands Corporation, formerly known as Smith & Wesson, the manufacturer of the rifle used by Cruz, and distributor Sunrise Tactical Supply, the retailer who sold Cruz the rifle, claiming damages due to "the defendant's complicity in the entirely foreseeable, deadly use of the assault-style weapons that they place on the market" on May 23, 2018.
82. Fifteen survivors sued the county, sheriff and school officials for failing to protect them. They claimed that the government's inadequate response to the shooting violated their Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. However, this lawsuit was dismissed in December 2018, with the judge citing prior ruling in a different case that the government did not have a duty to protect the defendants from the actions of the shooter.
83. This did not discourage them though and in 2021, the families of the victims of the shooting were awarded a $25 million settlement from Broward County School District, after a civil lawsuit was filed by the families of the victims alleging the school district's negligence was to blame. Later in the year, it was announced that the families of the victims had also reached a $125 to $130 million settlement with the federal government. This was due to the FBI's inactivity after receiving the anonymous tip that had been through the FBI tip line a month prior to the shooting and detailed Cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill others, erratic behavior, and social media posts, and was not followed up on by investigators properly. 
84. School Resource Officer Scot Peterson, remember the only other armed man on sight who hid for 48 minutes and never entered building 12. As a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy, he was accused of remaining outside Building 12 during the shooting and eight days after the attack, he was suspended without pay by Sheriff Israel. He immediately retired. Sheriff Israel would state that "Scot Peterson was absolutely on campus for this entire event", and that he should have "gone in, addressed the killer”.
85. In June 2019, following an investigation that included interviews with 184 witnesses, Peterson was then arrested before bonding out for the crime of failing to protect the students during the shooting. He faced 11 charges of neglect of a child, as well as culpable negligence and perjury. 
86. Peterson pleaded not guilty and filed a motion to have all charges dropped. The motion was denied and jury selection started on May 31, 2023. On June 29, 2023, Peterson was found not guilty on all charges.
87. Sheriff’s Office Captain Jan Jordan, who was reported to have been in a dream-like state during the shooting, had failed to set up a command center, and ordered a perimeter instead of having her deputies confront the shooter was widely criticized and resigned nine months following the incident. 
88. Blame for the shooting was lobbied around in all sorts of directions. BBC News criticized Republican politicians' reactions for  focusing on mental health issues while dodging debate on gun control. Republican Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin placed the blame on video games that have desensitized the value of human life to people. Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio argued that gun laws would not have prevented any shooting in recent history and that we should instead focus on issues of violence. Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas came out as supporting age restriction on AR-15 style rifles and that nobody under the age of 21 should own one. This was rebuffed by Republican Senator from Oklahoma James Lankford who stated it was a matter of more comprehensive background checks that was needed. Republican governor of Ohio John Kasich argued that we needed to restrict the sale of that type of gun completely. 
89. Survivors were frankly sick of the useless bickering. Biting back at politicians who offered little more than thoughts or prayers while lining their pockets with money from the National Rifle Association, student survivors organized Never Again MSD. The group was created on social media with the hashtag #NeverAgain. The group demanded legislative action to prevent similar shootings, and condemned lawmakers who received political contributions from the NRA. They held a Rally on February 17th in Fort Lauderdale that was attended by hundreds of supporters. Since then, several more demonstrations have taken place. The Women's March Network organized a 17-minute school walkout that took place on March 14. A series of demonstrations called "March for Our Lives" on March 24 included a march in Washington, D.C. On April 20th, on the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, all-day walkouts were planned.
90. In mid-March, Lori Alhadeff, mother of victim Alyssa Alhadeff, announced her own nonprofit organization, Make Schools Safe, which will be mostly focusing on school campus security.
91. These impacts had some success when in March 2018, the Florida Legislature passed a bill titled the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. It raised the minimum age for buying rifles to 21, established waiting periods and background checks, provided a program for the arming of some school employees and hiring of school police, banned bump stocks, and barred some potentially violent or mentally unhealthy people arrested under certain laws from possessing guns. But of course the NRA had something to say about it and sued, challenging the ban on gun sales to people under the age of 21. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida upheld the constitutionality of the law and dismissed the NRA's suit in June 2021. The NRA appealed and while a three-judge panel initially upheld the law in March, 2023, in July of the same year, the Eleventh circuit granted the NRA’s petition to rehear it. 
92. People, as you can imagine, were not too pleased with the NRA both following the shooting and their actions in the courtroom. This led to calls for boycotts of the gun rights advocacy groups and its business affiliates. This led to several companies terminating their business relationships with the NRA.
93. Major gun sellers such as Dick's, Walmart, and Fred Meyer voluntarily raised the age requirement on gun purchases from 18 to 21 or removed guns from their inventory entirely. 
94. Manuel Oliver, the father of victim Jaoquin Oliver, has used art and activism to push for stronger gun regulation since the incident and even used AI to create an Ad in which his son urges people to vote for stronger gun control as he is no longer here to do it for himself. I watched the ad and it honestly still gives me goosebumps to think about. Oliver has also created a mural about the demand for change, unfurled a picture of his son atop a 150-foot-high crane near the White House, traveled to the sites of other school shootings around the country in a retrofitted school bus and filed a claim against the U.S. government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Currently he is performing a one man show in which he re-enacts the life and death of his son to call attention to the still present need for change. 
95. On Friday August 4th, 2023, 140 live rounds were fired inside the school to reenact the shooting rampage as part of the lawsuit against school resource officer Scot Peterson. Several of the shooting victims’ families and a survivor are suing Peterson and wanted to reenact the shooting to try to prove the former deputy heard after several claims by him that he did not know if it was firecrackers or bullets and where the shooter was. 
96. A CNN crew across the street reported hearing four sounds that resembled gunshots during a two-hour span as the reenactment took place.
97. Shortly before the re-enactment, a delegation including nine members of Congress spent an hour touring the bullet-riddled and bloodstained halls of the 1200 Building at the school. The six Democrats and three Republicans who were members of the House School Safety and Security Caucus, were joined by members of the Broward County State Attorney’s Office and some of the victims’ families.
98. The tour began at the same door where the gunman entered and followed the same path he took during the attack.
99. The scene inside the building is described as something frozen in time. Valentine’s Day gifts and cards, students’ notes and assignments as well as bloodstains, bullet holes, and broken glass.
100. Building 12 is set to be demolished this year after the school year finishes. 
101. The school is reopened and operational. In fact, classes started again just two weeks after the shooting among heavy police presence. On June 3, 2018, the school had its graduation ceremony and diplomas were presented to the families of Nicholas Dworet, Joaquin Oliver, Meadow Pollack, and Carmen Schentrup, the four seniors who were killed in the attack. The ceremony was dedicated to "those not with us" and many graduates wore sashes that were emblazoned with #MSDStrong, or decorated their caps with references to the Never Again movement, while some dedicated their caps to their late classmates. Families of the victims also made statements; the mother of Joaquin Oliver accepted his diploma in a shirt saying "This should be my son".
102. What happened on Valentine's day in 2018 was a horrific, horrific incident which the families are still grieving. It is stomach-twisting to think that school shootings are still such a rampant issue and that little to nothing is being done to stop it in the name of money and politics. I cannot imagine being in the shoes of these families and having to live everyday with this loss. I’m not going to lie, this is the second episode that has ever gotten me before. I can usually hold it together but this one also really affected me. Nikolas Cruz is being held in prison but we don’t know where as the state has not released that information. The Parkland School Shooting remains the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US History. I try not to get into politics on the podcast but elections are coming up and I honestly hope when you are considering you vote this year, you consider the kids who don’t get to have one anymore. 
103. Well, that’s all for this episode. That was really hard on me. Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and leave a review. The Odder Pod is also on TikTok. Come follow us there! Have a suggestion for a show? Send me an email at theodderpod@gmail.com with your request and whether you’d like me to mention your name, your alias, or nothing at all. Remember this is The Odder Side so give me something cool, creepy, or confusing to deep dive for you. If you liked the show, leave us a review! They really help! Happy 2nd Birthday to The Odder! Here's to another year! The Odder Podcast posts every other Thursday. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time on The Odder side.