Emma Gonzalez You Didnt Know This Kid
Update: This story has been updated to remove the photo of the alleged gunman and the description about him has been edited.
Two of the teenagers are headed to Harvard. Ii of the adults are fighting for their jobs. Just all who rose to prominence in the painful hours and days after a gunman'south brutal rampage at a Florida high school one yr agone take been forever transformed.
On Valentine's Day in 2018, authorities say Nikolas Cruz walked into the freshman building at sprawling Marjory Stoneman Douglas High with a purse containing, among other things, a semiautomatic rifle. The ensuing numbers were excruciating: half-dozen minutes of shooting, more than 100 rounds fired, 17 students and staff killed and 17 wounded.
Cruz, who had been expelled from the school the year before, walked away and was arrested more than an 60 minutes later. Students David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, Jaclyn Corin and Alex Wind were amongst a group who would gather at the home of Cameron Kasky, adamant to ensure that the deaths of their classmates and friends would not be shrugged off with "thoughts and prayers" and forgotten.Thus, the "Never Again MSD" motility was born. The group was a crucial organizer of the National School Walkout of March xiv and, 10 days later, the March for Our Lives that drew more than 1 meg people beyond the nation to rallies for safety schools and an end to gun violence.
The teens oasis't stopped working, urging young people to register and vote even though some of the students thrust into celebrity are barely old enough to vote themselves. They've been lobbying for tighter restrictions on firearms and challenging the National Rifle Association and the politicians it supports.
More:After Parkland shooting: A twenty-four hours-past-day fight over guns in America
"I'll always care most the issues that face our nation," Kasky told United states TODAY. "And I will always feel defended to helping play a part in solving them."
Kris Brown, president of the Brady Entrada to Foreclose Gun Violence, lauded the students as articulate – and understandably angry. She noted that after the 2012 attack at Sandy Claw Elementary in Connecticut, the survivors were very young children whose parents took up the challenge. High-schoolers made the scene different, she said.
"A lot of time the media is rushing to the site of a mass shooting but not finding a lot of people to talk to," Brown said. "Here, you had people willing to talk, and articulate."
Gonzalez's mother, Beth, told "60 Minutes" her daughter was a normal high school senior. Then came the shooting.
"It'southward like she built herself a pair of wings out of balsa woods and duct tape and jumped off a building," Beth Gonzalez said. "And we're just, like, running along below her with a cyberspace, which she doesn't desire or think that she needs."
Last calendar week, Kasky attended the State of the Marriage address and a House Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence. Hogg has offered to speak on gun violence at any loftier schoolhouse or higher that wants him. Corin has promoted a March for Our Lives New Jersey to fight an effort to put in armed officers in Chatham schools.
While the students polish, local officials struggle. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, set up to examine the tragedy, criticized Broward Canton Sheriff Scott Israel for a policy that deputies "may" confront active shooters rather than "shall" do so. Deputy Scot Peterson, the school resource officer and first law enforcement on the scene, was among those who did not.
School administrators, led by Superintendent Robert Runcie, also drew scrutiny in the report. The panel said schoolhouse staffers were non prepared to bargain with a mass shooting. Runcie has since ordered safety upgrades. Ii school security monitors were fired, and three assistant principals and a security specialist were reassigned.
The schoolhouse will mark the tragic anniversary Thursday with a Day of Service and Love. Students will be serving breakfast to local first responders and packing meals for undernourished children. Mental wellness experts and therapy dogs will be there. At ten:17 a.one thousand., the entire commune and the community is asked to observe a moment of silence to honor the 17 who lost their lives.
The consequence of the shooting and its aftermath on school safety and gun policy remains mixed.
Jeremy Finn, a professor at the University at Buffalo's Graduate School of Teaching and an expert on school prophylactic, said expenditures for schoolhouse security have been on the rise since 1999. He said highly publicized shootings such as Parkland "crusade an additional spike in the curve."
But that may not make students experience safer. He said studies bear witness that in schools with loftier levels of security – five or more obvious security measures – students experience less safe than they practise compared with schools with lower levels of security.
"The measures – whether schoolhouse resource officers or other guards, cameras, locker checks, canis familiaris sniffs – seem to act as a constant reminder that there is always the possibility of damage," Finn said.
States approved dozens of gun control measures last year, some to keep firearms from people convicted of domestic violence or considered suicidal, others to increment background checks and to restrict concealed carrying.
In that location was no pregnant federal legislation, just the Trump administration did issue a federal regulation banning bump stocks.
The shootings "started a journey that nosotros are nevertheless witnessing," Brown said. "These kids are still out there, and they have made change."
Here is a look at some of the people thrust into the spotlight by the tragedy:
Cameron Kasky
Kasky was a junior "theater kid" who had but left a drama class when the carnage began. His stature grew a week after the shooting when, during a CNN-hosted town hall, he grilled Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio for his close ties to the NRA. "Sen. Rubio, it'due south hard to expect at you and not look downwards a butt of an AR-15 and non look at Nikolas Cruz," he said.
But months later on Kasky grew to regret his handling of the senator. Kasky says he wants to encourage bipartisanship. "If information technology weren't for the awful mistakes I've made and the many things I regret, I don't know if I would've always grown up or learned to hold myself answerable for my actions," Kasky recently tweeted.
But he wants others held answerable, too, telling USA TODAY that "Sheriff State of israel is gone and that's terrific." He wants Runcie to resign and said he believes some school officials should be fired for their inaction.
Kasky shrugs off his efforts: "Tin activism be the act of simply tweeting? Hashtag-driven solidarity?"
Every bit for his time to come, Kasky said, he is "really trying to get into colleges for next year. God knows if information technology'll work."
Emma Gonzalez
Gonzalez, 19,was a senior and president of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance. She wasin the school'due south auditorium when Cruz struck – hiding, comforting beau students and searching the Internet for updates until authorities crashed in and ordered them to flee. Gonzalez rocketed to fame after taking on President Donald Trump, the NRA, politicians and every foe of stricter gun laws in an electrifying speech in Fort Lauderdale days afterward the shooting.
"We call B.S." was her recurring theme at the rally, taking aim at those who say cypher could have prevented the attack, or that stricter gun laws won't help or that good guys need guns to stop the bad guys.
Her Twitter handle, @Emma4Change, has more one.six million followers. She recently noted that Trump associate Roger Stone was processed at the aforementioned courthouse where she gave her speech. "Sometimes the universe has a funny sense of sense of humor :-)," she tweeted.
Gonzalez, now attending New College of Florida, was honored by Variety equally one of its five 2018 Power of Women. But the fame isn't the biggest change in her life since the shooting, she told the mag. "There are always moments in the day when I get hit with a sadness well-nigh the people who have been lost in this tragedy," she said. "That has direct afflicted me."
David Hogg
Hogg was a senior at the school, unsure whether to pursue a career as an engineer or a journalist. He had an internship at the local newspaper, the South Florida Sun-Picket. He crouched in a dark classroom when the shooting started, then waited for a SWAT squad to escort him and others to safety. While waiting, he turned on his phone'due south video recorder and narrated the events. Hogg and his classmates at first believed it was a rubber do. Merely when more than gunshots rang out, "we realized this was non a drill."
He went home and gave his video to the Sun-Lookout man. After, he went dorsum to the school and began recounting the tragedy to the phalanx of Television receiver crews that had descended on Parkland. He urged the media not to allow Parkland to become just one more mass shooting. He was on "Good Forenoon America" the next day, and already his pitch for safer schools and gun control was sharpening.
Hogg has written a book with his younger sister Lauren, "#NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line." In the months after the shooting, Hogg failed to proceeds admission to UCLA and a few other top schools. That drew venom from Fob News host Laura Ingraham, who accused him of "whining" after the rejections.
Ingraham, under pressure, afterwards apologized. Hogg took a gap year, advocating across the nation for youth activism and gun control. He continues to clash with the NRA and conservative broadcasters. He says he will enroll at Harvard in the autumn.
Jaclyn Corin
Corin, president of the school'southward junior grade, was hiding in a classroom during the tragedy that would take the life of her skilful friend Joaquin Oliver. Corin helped drive a social media campaign using the hashtag #WhatIf aimed at ending gun violence. Her own #WhatIf video drew more than 1.5 1000000 views. She also was prime organizer of a "lightning strike" motorbus trip to the land Capitol, six days later the shooting, that saw scores of Marjory Stoneman Douglas students rally for tighter gun regulations.
Corin continues to advocate via social media. Contempo posts include accusing Trump of pressing "false narratives" on gun violence and i quoting Martin Luther Rex Jr. maxim "unarmed truth and unconditional beloved will have the final word." Corin will graduate in the spring and says she volition attend Harvard in the fall.
Alex Wind
Air current was a junior and drama gild member who was amongst the outset students to call out the president. That afternoon, when Trump tweeted condolences to families of the victims, Wind rapidly responded, "Make stricter gun laws then."
Current of air made a splash days later when he sang the national anthem as part of a tribute to the victims at a Miami Heat basketball game. Now a senior, Wind recently joined other students in a book co-written by the March for Our Lives founders called "Blink of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Motility."
"We desire to exist the ones who tell the story because we were in that location," Wind said. "We know what happened. No ane else."
Scot Peterson
Peterson, a deputy sheriff and the school resources officeholder, heard the gunshots merely drew criticism for failing to face up the shooter. Sheriff Scott Israel called Peterson a "disgrace," proverb the deputy should accept rushed in, "addressed the killer, killed the killer."
Trump even chimed in, maxim Peterson "didn't have the backbone or something happened. ... That's a instance where somebody was outside, they're trained, they didn't act properly or under pressure or they were a coward."
Peterson said he at first believed the shooting was firecrackers outside the school then could not make up one's mind where the gunshots were coming from. He said he followed protocol by taking upward a tactical position outside the building. The commission, nonetheless, determined that he lied – that Peterson knew the shooter was within Edifice 1200 but did non want to confront him. Peterson ultimately resigned merely has fatigued criticism for collecting a pension of more than $100,000 a yr.
Scott Israel
Israel appeared calm and in control in news conferences in the hours and days after the shooting. He lives in Parkland, and his kids graduated from the schoolhouse. He drew positive media reviews after calling for more stringent groundwork checks and tighter gun control laws.
State of israel, however, drew scorn from the families of some victims for not requiring deputies to confront agile shooters. Israel said he had eliminated the policy requiring such activeness because he didn't desire deputies charging into "suicide missions."
One of the commencement acts of Gov. Ron DeSantis after taking office last month was suspending Israel, accusing him of "neglect of duty" and "incompetence." State of israel has requested a hearing on his fate before the state Senate.
"I wholeheartedly turn down the statements in the governor's executive order," Israel said. "In that location was no wrongdoing on my part."
Robert Runcie
Runcie, the schools superintendent, also drew burn down from families of the victims and the public rubber commission for peradventure lax security on campus and a PROMISE program designed to prevent some young violators from getting police records.
Last week Runcie met with parents at the schoolhouse amid criticism for keeping the meeting closed to the public – and even to members of the school lath.
Kasky called Runcie a "full disgrace." Merely he does have some support. Adora Obi Nweze, president of the NAACP Florida State Conference, warned that removing Runcie "would be an farthermost overreach, highly political and racist."
Runcie volition keep his job for now. DeSantis said last month that he doesn't have the power to remove him. Only before Gov. Rick Scott left office in January, he appointed Andrew Pollack – whose daughter, Meadow, was killed in the attack – to the land Board of Teaching. Pollack has vowed to drive Runcie from part.
Runcie has held his footing. And he recently outlined plans to implement key safety recommendations.
"There is a tremendous amount of work that has taken place across the District focused on safety and security," he said. "For the 17 students and staff who died, the 17 who were injured, and the 271,000 students nosotros educate every day, we won't residual until we have the safest school district in the land of Florida."
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Nikolas Cruz is being held without bail on 17 counts of premeditated murder and other charges that could outcome in the death penalty. Defence lawyers take acknowledged that Cruz was the killer and accept focused on avoiding execution.
Contributing: Doug Stanglin
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/02/10/parkland-one-year-after-shooting-where-key-figures-are-now/2721798002/
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