US shooting victims remembered with tree planting
A cluster of totara trees will be forever significant to a group of American students whose schoolmates were killed in a mass shooting.
Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, gathered to remember their schoolmates at a ceremony at Halswell Quarry Park in Christchurch yesterday.
They were joined by members of the Student Volunteer Army, all there to plant trees to memorialise the victims of one of the worst school shootings in United States history.
Former student Nikolas Cruz may face the death penalty for allegedly shooting and killing 17 people and injuring 17 more at the school on February 14.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma Davis, one of 28 students to make the journey to New Zealand, said February 14 was ‘‘an awful day’’.
‘‘That’s all I really want to say. I’d rather choose to focus on the positive events that can come out of it,’’ Davis, 15, said.
It was special to plant the totara trees, which should grow 50 metres tall and live for hundreds of years, to ‘‘commemorate [the victims] and have this connection to New Zealand’’, she said.
The group gathered as a tree was put in the ground for security guard Aaron Feis, who died while sheltering students.
A teacher from the school read some words as tears fell down the face of several of the students, emotions still raw five months after the incident.
The students are in Christchurch for a week-long summit focused on enhancing youth leadership movements.
The Parkland students’ own movement, #NeverAgain, calls for tighter gun control to curb the alarming rate of mass shootings in the US.
Davis said the SVA – formed to respond to community need after the Canterbury earthquakes – could teach them a lot about resilience in the face of tragedy.