9 Horrific Accounts From the Florida Shooting
In the aftermath of a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, at least 17 people are confirmed dead. Nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz, a former student of the school, has been arrested and charged with 17 counts of murder. Below, just some of the absolutely awful eyewitness accounts from the day.
"I felt very uncomfortable because anybody could be a shooter."
"Right below me on the first floor, I heard shooting and I saw two guys running. I wasn't sure what it was. And then I heard it again. That's when me and a group of people ran downstairs, and I could tell [the shooter] was on my left side because that's where I heard the gunshots from, and it was very loud ... I just ran.
My mom was across the street trying to get me, but the cops had us on the floor for about 20 minutes. I was with a group of kids ... and I didn't know if any of them were shooters or not. I felt very uncomfortable because anybody could be a shooter," student Masiel Baluja told CNN.
"'That can't be anything other than a gunshot.'"
"I just hear 'boom, boom, boom,' and I was just like 'what the heck is that? That can't be anything other than a gunshot.' I was like 'I am not about to be shot.' So I started running. Everyone was just climbing the fence over by Westglades [Middle School]. There was no room on the fence, just everyone climbing," student Victoria Adams told the Associated Press.
"And I saw some bodies. It wasn't good."
"I heard screaming. I heard about five, six gunshots. We thought [they were] firecrackers because they sounded like them. And we heard the police yelling and there was banging on the doors. And I saw some bodies. It wasn't good. [One of the bodies I recognized] was my friend's teacher," an unnamed student told CNN.
"I took a book, I held it up, and I believe maybe the book kind of deterred some of the bullets."
"I heard two shots. My friend pushed me and said, 'Sam," and I ran to the left side of the classroom. That's where there was a big bookshelf, and we all kind of huddled there together. We clamped really close, tightly together. And then students in front of me, there was this cabinet, they pushed it in front of them so that it would [block] some of the bullets. There were two people in the hallway that I know and they were shot.
[The shooter] came for our classroom. He came after he shot those other two people [in the hallway]. The door was locked, thankfully, but he shot quite a few bullets into the glass and it hit a few people behind me," student Samantha Grady told the TODAY show. Her best friend was shot and killed next to her.
"[Kids] were on their phones just trying to Snapchat everything because they thought it was a joke."
"Kids were freaking out. Some kids froze. Some kids were on their phones. A lot were on their phones just trying to Snapchat everything because they thought it was a joke. It wasn't," a former Douglas student told the New York Times.
"In the classroom, I was sitting down and all I heard was 'pop, pop, pop.'"
"In the classroom, I was sitting down and all I heard was 'pop, pop, pop.' The moment I heard 'pop,' I cleared, I left. I wasn't gonna deal with that. It was at least seven shots and when I was leaving, I heard at least two more," a student told USA Today.
"I managed to put 19 kids in the closet with me."
"We ran back inside the classroom and crouched down on the floor, and we moved into the closet and we were hidden in the closet. I managed to put 19 kids in the closet with me. I just know this is the worst nightmare or scenario that you hope never happens to you and all these [kids], " teacher Melissa Falkowski told CNN.
"There were people running towards me and I realized this was not any drill. This was life or death."
"After we heard the first gunshot we thought it was a drill, but after we started evacuating to our fire-zone because the fire alarm had been pulled and there were people running towards me, I realized this was not any drill. This was life or death. As the people started running towards me, I started running with them. But actually that was a bad choice.
A janitor, thank god, stopped me and all of my other fellow students from going in that direction [because it was] towards the shooter. Right after he stopped us, we were able to get into a classroom, thank god for [that teacher]. Without her, who knows how many of us would have died.
Honestly, when I was going out [of the school] I was in shock. I hadn't realized the true calamity of the situation because, again, we thought this was a drill, and it wasn't. Sadly, it wasn't," student David Hogg, told ABC.
"You have no idea how many bullets he had."
"Videos started to spread. It was really bad. We knew this wasn't a drill. You have no idea how many bullets he had. It seemed like it was out of a video game," Ameer Hussain told PEOPLE.
