Text messages sent by students fearing for their lives as a teenage gunman stalked the halls of their school show the feelings of these lucky survivors.
As 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz patrolled the halls of a freshman building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, students and teachers who had discussed how to react in exactly that situation huddled in hiding places, praying not to be found.
Being teens, they had their phones. being human, they reached out to their loved ones.
The students knew, from social media, that they were in the middle of a deadly school shooting. They had no idea if they would survive.
Sarah Crescitelli sent this message to her parents: “If I don’t make it I love you and I appreciated everything you did for me.”
This student reached out to her mother, not sure if what was happening was real. Her choice of words, her pleas for help show her feelings so much more powerfully than the words ‘terror” or “panic” could.
Admitted Guilt
Nicolas Cruz was read his rights, and then confessed to police that he entered the high school he had once attended, armed with an AR-15 rifle, and carrying an extra loaded magazine, the Washington Examiner reported.He admitted to gunning down 14 students and three teachers, outside a freshman building, in its hallways, and by firing into locked classrooms where terrified children huddled in closets or crouched under desks.
Around that time Cruz watched a YouTube documentary about Charles Whitman, who is thought to be America’s first mass shooter.
Cruz commented on the video three times over a span of three months. His first post said simply, “I am going to do what he did.”
His later posts, made three months after the first included the phrases “I wish to kill as many as I can,” and “I am going to kill them in the future.”
“People leave pretty heinous comments on a pretty regular basis on this channel,” Bennight explained. Explaining he generally ignored the harsh or hateful posts. “This comment said, ‘I’m going to be a professional school shooter,’ and I knew that I just couldn’t ignore that.”
Bennight notified the FBI on Sept 24, 2017.
All the comments Cruz posted disappeared when YouTube terminated his account after the Feb. 14 school shooting.
