Objects left in sorrow find new home

Items taken from Parkland memorial are moved to FAU

Teddy bears, pinwheels, a banner and other items that were taken from the makeshift memorial outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in March found a new home Monday at Florida Atlantic University.

In the days and weeks following the mass shooting at the Parkland school, mourners left hundreds of items to express their sorrow for the lives that were lost, their sympathy for survivors and the families of the dead, and their dedication to the cause of reducing gun violence.

Two people, Michael Shawn Kennedy, 37, of Hollywood, and Kara O’Neil, 40, of Fulton, N.Y., admitted taking numerous items from the site, according to police reports, and were arrested in late March, accused of removing or disfiguring a tomb or a monument, a felony offense.

But prosecutors realized there was no crime in what Kennedy and O’Neil did — the items were legally considered abandoned, and a makeshift memorial on property accessible to the general public cannot be defined as a tomb. There was no theft because no one owned the items, and there was no trespassing.

“The defendants’ conduct in this case was indisputably insensitive and arguably cretinous,” the State Attorney’s Office determined. “However, it was not criminal.”

The decision to drop the case came in May.

With no criminal case, the swiped items are no longer considered evidence, and Parkland Commissioner Ken Cutler set out to preserve the items along with others that were left outside the school.

“These are the collective expressions of grief and hope and an outpouring of sympathy for our community,” said Cutler. “We need to do everything in our power to protect and preserve this expression.”

Cutler said he’s hoping to encourage state legislatures to pass a law protecting makeshift memorials from vandalism.

“I am incensed that this kind of wanton disregard for the feeling of other people in the community would not have some sort of legal consequence,” he said.

But for now he said he is happy that the items are safe.

JOE CAVARETTA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Parkland City Historian Jeff Schwartz holds Marjory Stoneman Douglas memorabilia at the Wimberly Library at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.