There was ANOTHER horrible school shooting yesterday. I can't even believe I'm saying it.
It happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and seventeen people were killed. Parkland is in southeast Florida, about half an hour north of Fort Lauderdale.
That makes it one of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, and the fourth-deadliest school shooting.
It's also already the EIGHTEENTH school shooting in America in 2018. It's February 15th. What kind of society do we live in?
The shooter is a 19-year-old former student at the school named Nikolas Cruz. He was expelled from the school for disciplinary reasons and according to the police, his social media history is, quote, "very, very disturbing."
He posted about guns and violence, talked about killing people with an AR-15 assault rifle, and posed with BB guns, shotguns, and knives. Other students have talked about how he was a loner.
He used an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle yesterday, the same weapon that was used in the Vegas and Texas church massacres last year . . . the Pulse shooting in Orlando in 2016 . . . the San Bernardino attack in 2015 . . . and at Sandy Hook in 2012.
He may have pulled a fire alarm to draw kids out of class towards the end of the day, and make the death toll as high as possible . . . he had multiple magazines with him.
But a lot of people thought the fire alarm was suspicious, since there'd ALREADY been a fire drill that day.
Of the seventeen victims, two were killed outside the school, 12 died in the school, one died on the street, and another two died at the hospital. Thirteen other people ended up in the hospital too.
The shooter initially got away afterwards, maybe by blending in with other kids who were running away. But the police quickly caught him, and now he's in custody.
That's rare in these situations . . . in the other 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, the shooter was killed or killed themselves. The shooter's motive isn't clear right now, but it turns out he was adopted, and both of his adopted parents were dead.
Credit: Wise Brothers Media; (CNN / Los Angeles Times / Fox News)
Matt Pierce, Madison Park, Ryan Gaydos
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/14/us/nikolas-cruz-florida-shooting-suspect/index.html
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ar-15-story.html
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/15/suspected-gunman-nikolas-cruz-was-living-with-florida-high-school-student-in-months-leading-up-to-massacre-attorney-says.html