Testimony: Death toll higher in school massacre because security recommendation was ignored
Sun Sentinel
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—People died in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because the school failed to implement a simple security measure that had been recommended twice to teachers and administrators, according to testimony Wednesday at a meeting of the state commission investigating the massacre.
Security experts on two separate occasions in the past two years advised teachers and administrators to mark safe areas called “hard corners” in each classroom, said Pinellas County Sheriff’s Detective Walter Bonasoro, serving as an investigator for the commission.
These are areas located at an angle that would prevent anyone firing a gun through the classroom door from hitting anyone in them.
But just two teachers in Building 12, where the shooting took place, marked off hard corners, using tape, and these had too much furniture and other materials for all students to be able to crowd into them during the shooting.
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The revelation added to the growing list of missed opportunities by the school district and law enforcement agencies for preventing—or at least mitigating—a shooting that left 17 dead and 17 wounded.
Max Schachter, whose son, Alex, was killed, asked if anyone died because of the failure to have marked, cleared hard corners.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the chairman of the commission, said, “There were some, definitely.”
“One in particular died on the line because she was nudged out of a hard corner and couldn’t get in,” he said.
The schools’ personnel were advised to implement them by Al Butler, a school district security expert, and Steven Wexler, a retired Secret Service agent.
“Broward County Public Schools does not have a policy relating to classroom set up, other than the minimum standards established by the fire code,” stated a written presentation given to the commission Wednesday. “The District has no policy regarding the establishment of hard corners or safe areas in each room.”
Gualtieri said there is still no districtwide policy requiring hard corners.
Schachter said he found this “unbelievable.”
“It takes zero dollars to do it,” he said. “It needs to be done districtwide.”
Another revelation Wednesday concerned Andrew Medina, the coach and school security monitor who had previously been allowed to keep his job, despite a sexual harassment charge. After the shooting, when news came out of the harassment charge and Medina’s performance in the massacre, he was fired.
When Cruz exited an Uber car and walked on campus, Medina immediately recognized what he was carrying as a rifle bag, a fact that emerged for the first time during Wednesday’s commission meeting.
But despite his awareness that a teen he knew to be trouble was walking onto campus with a rifle bag, Medina failed to call a code red, an alarm of “imminent danger” that would have required everyone on campus to hold in place.
Medina was just a few feet away from Building 12, where the shooting was beginning. He heard gunfire.
“He stated he believed he could not call a code red unless he physically saw the gun or heard gunshots,” the detective said. “Despite hearing the gunshots, he still did not call the code red. Medina admitted he did not approach Cruz because he thought Cruz might have had a handgun that was readily accessible to him.”
By the time another campus monitor, Elliot Bonner, called a code red, Cruz had been shooting for more than three minutes.
There was no drilling on code reds and no guidance, and few teachers were concerned.
A common statement from teachers, according to the detective, was, “It’s Parkland, we didn’t think that anything like this could happen here.”