Parkland High School massacre site: demolition begins in front of victims' families

Parkland, Florida
CNN
—

For six years, a building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 people, was a nightmare frozen in time. But today the 1,200 meter building, which housed the bloody and heartbreaking remains of the massacre, is being demolished.

Demolition of the building began Friday morning, with an excavator digging out the top floor of the three-story building under clear skies. Some of the victims' family members watched from nearby tents on the school grounds. Some cried. According to the Broward County Public Schools district, this is expected to take several weeks. It will be dismantled into pieces, starting at the top.

“This building has been a symbol – a symbol of failure. I know many in the community are happy this is over,” said Tony Montalto, who lost his 14-year-old daughter, Gina. His son worries that people will forget once the building is destroyed. His wife had become attached to it every time they took the legislators through its halls.

“As for me, I'm concerned because we haven't yet seen a solid plan for what's going to replace this building. We need something that reflects those who were taken from us, the people they were before the tragedy. »

The district said in May that demolition would take place in summer 2024, after the school year ends on Monday. Demolition was originally scheduled to begin Thursday, but was delayed due to several days of torrential rain in South Florida.

The shooting tore apart 17 families, including 14 students and three teachers, on Valentine's Day in 2018. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“This is another step in our healing process,” Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was killed at the school, told CNN on Friday.

“And it's important that… six years later, that building is falling down and my family, you know, is mourning the death of our daughter, Alyssa. We heal, but we also try to make changes.

Alhadeff founded the nonprofit Make Our Schools Safe, which promotes school safety. Alyssa's Law, which requires public elementary and secondary school buildings to be equipped with silent panic alarms to notify law enforcement, is in effect in six states.

“We know that time equals life,” Alhadeff said, noting that lawmakers who visited the building — “seeing the blood on the floor, the glass on the floor, the horror” — were driven to action.

Alhadeff said she hoped the field would be transformed into a “usable space” she called “MSD Legacy Field” that could serve as a “teaching area where we can remember and keep the legacy alive.”

“The day before Alyssa was murdered, she played her last soccer game and she was fierce,” her mother recalled Friday. “She was captain of her soccer team, wore number eight, and we miss and love Alyssa so much, and we will continue to keep your memory alive through Make Our Schools Safe.”

Before the demolition began, a rainbow hovered over the area where the victims' families later gathered.

Among those gathered were Debbi Hixon and her son Corey, whose father, Chris, 49, the school's athletic director and wrestling coach, was killed that day. Alhadeff was there with his family, as well as Montalto. And Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was murdered while in English class. Once the demolition began, Schachter didn't stop watching.

“When I showed people this building, it changed their lives,” Schachter said. “And everyone who came out of that building was focused on making sure this never happened again.”

Even after its demolition, Schachter said, Building 1200 will still be there.

“I will always remember the horrific images I saw walking through that building, knowing the pain Alex felt when he was shot and murdered. There is no closure for me. This is progress in this journey that I am taking.

His only regret, Schachter says, is that more people cannot bear witness to this horror.

“It’s hard to understand the magnitude of the failures unless you walk through this building,” he said.

“In Florida, we have passed seven safe school bills since Parkland. We take this very, very seriously. Safety must be prioritized over education, because you cannot educate dead children. I look at this building today and it reminds me of all the failures that happened that day.

It rained earlier, but when the excavator got to work, the sky was a clear blue. Some family members greeted each other with hugs. Others got into small groups and talked.

The school building was preserved pending trials of the shooter and Parkland school resource officer Scot Peterson, who remained outside during the massacre. A jury acquitted Peterson of all charges, exonerating him of any wrongdoing in the rare trial of a law enforcement officer.

On the day of the massacre, the then 19-year-old shooter grabbed his AR-15-style rifle and magazines and took an Uber to his old high school. There, he took out his rifle and loaded it and then wandered through the school hallways. He indiscriminately shot various students and staff in hallways and classrooms. He eventually left the school and was taken into custody several miles away.

The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.

Students initially returned to campus two weeks after the shooting. But the 1200 building, where most of the victims were killed, was sealed off with emergency tape and its windows were boarded up. A new building later replaced the temporary classrooms that students were using following the massacre.

Survivors and family members of those killed in the shooting were provided, at their request, with individual private tours in 2023 inside Building 1200 and described a tragic and grotesque scene, with blood stains in areas where the victims had been killed, bullet holes. puncturing classrooms and Valentine's Day candy still on students' desks.

Many schools where mass shootings occur choose to demolish the sites of the massacres to alleviate the extraordinary trauma experienced by survivors, victims' families, and the rest of the community. Four years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 26 people dead, a newly rebuilt school opened its doors to students, including fourth graders who were in kindergarten during the bloodbath.

Columbine High School also demolished its school library, where most of the carnage took place during the 1999 shooting that left 13 dead, and replaced it with a newly constructed school library called Hope Library.

In Uvalde, Texas, where students at Robb Elementary School were scarred by the 2022 massacre of 19 children and two teachers, city officials announced they also planned to tear down the building.

“In many cases, these schools are closed or completely renovated in an effort to reduce the traumatic reminders they have become for community members,” according to the Center for Violence Prevention at Children's Hospital. Philadelphia.

This story has been updated with additional information.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated who absolved Scot Peterson of wrongdoing. A jury acquitted him of all charges.