Irish teen’s escape from high school massacre
Mother’s relief as she sees daughter fleeing scene
AN Irish teenager was one of hundreds of students who escaped death in the Florida school Valentine’s Day massacre.
Adelina Hurley ran for her life when Nikolas Cruz went on a bloody rampage on Wednesday.
The 16-year-old escaped unharmed but one of her teenage pals was among the 17 pupils and teachers blasted to death by the 19-year-old psycho.
Adelina lived in Clontarf, North Dublin, up until six months ago, when her family packed up and moved to the States.
Her mum Olga, originally from Russia but who lived in Ireland for nearly two decades, told RTE Radio 1’s Morning Ireland they had bought a house near the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
It was there Cruz went on his rampage. Olga had driven to the school to collect her daughter that afternoon.
She said: “All of a sudden, they [the police] appeared from all directions.”
Adelina told how shortly after the alarm went off, her teacher started to look worried.
She added: “It was really scary because you were running and everyone was running, screaming and some crying.
“People were climbing the fence just to get out as fast as they could.”
Eventually Olga managed to make contact with her daughter.
She said: “Once I heard her voice I knew she would be OK. The panic… I didn’t know what to think. I just kept telling her, ‘Keep running’.
“I was so relieved to see my beautiful child in front of me. It’s a gift.”
Meanwhile, a British teenager hid in a cupboard with his classmates as Cruz went on the rampage. Lewis Mizen, 17, spent two terrifying hours in the darkness as the crazed gunman slaughtered his fellow students and teachers.
The teen, originally from Coventry, West Midlands, said the attack was “a nightmare come to life”. He was in a science class with 20 other students when Cruz stormed the building armed with an AR-15 assault rifle.
Lewis, who moved to the US with his family in 2009, said he and his classmates heard the fire alarm going off and calmly left the room assuming it was a drill. But as they walked down a corridor, school administrators began screaming “code red, get back in the building”.
Lewis sprinted back inside and his teacher eventually told the students to move into a storage cupboard.
He said: “We heard the helicopters. We knew it was something really serious. “We were all on our phones. I had people next to me watching CNN live, trying to figure out what’s going on. “I have friends who have been killed, I have friends who have been shot. How can this be real?”
Cruz is on 24-hour suicide watch in prison after appearing in court on Thursday afternoon.
His lawyer said he is a “broken human being, a broken child”. Video footage surfaced yesterday showing Cruz doing target practice in his back garden months before the massacre.
A neighbour filmed the teen, who was shirtless and wearing a Donald Trump-style Make America Great Again cap.
It also emerged police had been called to his family home 39 times over a seven-year period.