Parkland, Florida
CNN
—
For six years, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School building in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 people, was a place of nightmare frozen in time. But now, the building on the 1200 block, bearing the bloody and heartbreaking marks of the massacre, has been demolished.
Demolition began Friday morning, under clear skies as excavators began digging into the top floor of the three-story building. Some family members of the victims watched from tents nearby on the school grounds. Some cried. The work is expected to take several weeks to complete, according to the Broward County Public Schools district. The building will be taken down piecemeal, starting from the top.
“This building was a symbol, a symbol of failure. I know a lot of people in the community are happy to see it go,” said Tony Montalto, who lost his 14-year-old daughter, Gina. His son worries people will forget about it when it’s gone. His wife was attached to the building after leading lawmakers through its hallways so many times.
“For my part, I am concerned because we have yet to see any solid plans put forward for a replacement for this building. We need something that reflects the people who were taken from us and what they were like before the tragedy.”
The district announced in May that demolition work would take place after the school year ends Monday in the summer of 2024. Demolition work was originally scheduled to begin Thursday but was delayed due to several days of torrential rains in South Florida.
The shooting, which took place on Valentine’s Day in 2018, tore apart 17 families, including 14 students and three faculty members. The gunman was sentenced to life in prison without 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 this building is being demolished and our family is grieving the loss of our daughter, Alyssa. We are healing, but we are also trying to make a difference.”
Alhadeff founded the nonprofit Make Our Schools Safe, which promotes school safety. Six states have enacted Alyssa’s Law, which requires public elementary and middle schools to have silent panic alarms that can notify police.
“We know that time equals life,” Alhadeff said, noting that deputies who toured the building were motivated to act after “seeing the blood on the ground, the glass on the floor, the devastation.”
Wilfredo Lee/AP
Joan Wallace (right), a former special needs teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, embraces a bystander as demolition workers watch.
Alhadeff said he hopes the site will be transformed into a “usable space” he calls “MSD Legacy Field” that will serve as “an educational area where we can remember and keep our legacy alive.”
“The day before Alyssa was murdered, she played her final soccer game and was so brave,” her mother recalled Friday. “She was captain of the soccer team and wore number 8. We miss and love you so much, Alyssa, and we will keep your memory alive through ‘Make Our Schools Safe.'”
A rainbow was hung over the area where the victims’ families gathered before the demolition work began.
Among those gathered were Debbie Hixson and her son Corey, whose father, Chris, 49, was the school’s athletic director and wrestling coach and was killed that day; Alhadeff, who was there with his family, along with Montalto; and Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son, Alex, was killed while in English class. As the demolition began, Schachter didn’t stop watching.
“When we took people into that building, their lives were changed,” Schachter said, “and every single person who came out of that building was focused on making sure this never happens again.”
Schachter said the 1200 Building will likely remain there even after it is demolished.
“I will always remember the horrific images I saw walking through that building, knowing the pain of when Alex was shot and murdered. For me, this is not closure. This is progress on this journey I am on.”
Schachter said his only regret is that more people couldn’t witness the horror.
“Unless you’ve walked through the building, it’s hard to understand the magnitude of the failure,” he said.
“In Florida, we’ve passed seven school safety bills since Parkland. We take this very seriously. We must put safety before education, because you can’t teach a dead child. When I see this building today, I’m reminded of all that went wrong that happened that day.”
It had been raining earlier, but the skies were clear and blue by the time the excavators began work. Families exchanged hugs in greeting, while others stood chatting in small groups.
The school building was preserved pending the trial of the shooter and Parkland school security guard Scott Peterson, who was outside during the massacre. A jury acquitted Peterson of all charges and cleared him of any wrongdoing in a rare trial of a law enforcement officer.
On the day of the massacre, the then 19-year-old shooter grabbed an AR-15-style rifle and magazines and took an Uber to his former high school. There, he removed the rifle, loaded it, and roamed the campus, firing randomly at students and staff in hallways and classrooms. He eventually left the school and was arrested several miles away.
Students initially returned to campus two weeks after the shooting, but Building 1200, where most of the victims died, was sealed off with emergency tape and its windows covered, and new buildings have since been erected to replace the temporary classrooms students had used after the massacre.
Survivors of the shooting and family members of the victims were available upon request for private tours of Building 1200 in 2023 and described harrowing and grotesque scenes: blood stains where the victims were killed, bullet holes in classrooms, and Valentine’s Day candy still on students’ desks.
Many schools where mass shootings have occurred have chosen to demolish the crime scenes to ease the extraordinary trauma experienced by survivors, victims’ families, and local communities. Four years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 26 people dead, a newly rebuilt school has welcomed back students, including a fourth-grader who was in kindergarten at the time of the shooting.
Columbine High School also demolished the school library where much of the destruction took place during the 1999 mass shooting that left 13 people dead, and built a new one in its place, named Hope Library.
In Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were tragically massacred at Robb Elementary School in 2022, city officials say they also plan to demolish the school building.
According to the Center for Violence Prevention at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, “In many cases, these schools are closed or completely renovated to reduce what serve as traumatic reminders for community members.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated who cleared Scott Peterson of wrongdoing. A jury found him not guilty on all charges.
