A former student opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle at a Florida high school Wednesday, killing at least 17 people and sending scores of students fleeing into the streets in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since a gunman attacked an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
The shooter, who was equipped with a gas mask and smoke grenades, set off a fire alarm to draw students out of classrooms shortly before the day ended at one of the state’s largest schools, officials said.
Authorities offered no immediate details on the 19-year-old suspect or any possible motive, except to say that he had been expelled for disciplinary reasons from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which has about 3,000 students.
Frantic parents rushed to the school to find SWAT team members and ambulances surrounding the huge campus. Live television footage showed emergency workers who appeared to be treating the wounded on sidewalks.
“It is a horrific situation,” said Robert Runcie, superintendent of the school district in Parkland, about an hour’s drive north of Miami. “It is a horrible day for us.”
The suspect was taken into custody without a fight about an hour later in a residential neighborhood about a mile away. He had multiple magazines of ammunition, authorities said.
“It’s catastrophic. There really are no words,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters.
The attacker used the fire alarm “so the kids would come pouring out of the classrooms into the hall,” Sen. Bill Nelson told CNN.
“And there the carnage began,” said Nelson, who said he was briefed by the FBI.
The Florida Democrat said he did not know if the gunman used the smoke grenades, but he assumed that’s why he had a gas mask on.
Most of the fatalities were inside the building, though some victims were found fatally shot outside, the sheriff said.
The gunman was identified as Nikolas Cruz.
Student Daniel Huerfano said he recognized Cruz from an Instagram photo in which Cruz had posed with a gun in front of his face. He recalled that Cruz was shy when he attended the school and remembered seeing him walk around with his lunch bag.
Cruz “was that weird kid that you see ... like a loner,” he said.
Inside, students heard loud bangs as the shooter fired. Many of them hid under desks or in closets and barricaded doors.
Television footage showed students leaving in a single-file line with their hands over their heads as officers urged them to evacuate quickly.
The evacuation scene was reminiscent of the Newtown attack, which shocked even a country numbed by the regularity of school shootings. The Dec. 14, 2012, assault at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed 26 people — 20 first-graders and six staff members.
The Associated Press
-Agencies
