Shooting reenactment follows lawmakers visit

PARKLAND, Fla. — Gunfire erupted again at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Friday as part of a reenactment by ballistics experts of the 2018 massacre that left 14 students and three staff members dead.

Two shots were heard by reporters sitting about 200 yards from the building about noon and then two more about an hour later. A few hours later, the fire alarm went off, just like it did during the Valentine’s Day 2018 attack, but no shots were heard underneath it. During the massacre, 139 shots were fired.

The reenactment is part of a lawsuit by the victims’ families and the wounded that accuses the Broward County deputy assigned to the school, Scot Peterson, of failing in his duty to protect them and their loved ones. Peterson, who was acquitted at a criminal trial in June, has said because of echoes he could not pinpoint the shooter’s location.

David Brill, the attorney overseeing the reenactment on behalf of the families, did not return a call from The Associated Press seeking comment Friday. He told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that 49 rounds were fired Friday and that the test showed Peterson would have heard the shots and known their location.

The reenactment began shortly after nine members of Congress toured the bloodstained and bullet-pocked halls of the threestory classroom building where Nikolas Cruz carried out his six-minute attack. The building has been kept standing behind a locked chain-link fence to serve as evidence during Cruz’s trial last year.

The shooting sparked a nationwide movement for gun control and traumatized the South Florida community. Cruz, a 24-yearold former Stoneman Douglas student, pleaded guilty in 2021 and was sentenced to life in prison.

The experts were firing with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle identical to the one Cruz used, and the bullets were to be caught by a safety device.

Peterson got within feet of the building’s door and drew his gun, but backed away and stood next to an adjoining building for 40 minutes, making radio calls. He has said he would have charged into the building if he had known the shooter’s location.

Families of the victims who filed the lawsuit contend Peterson knew Cruz’s location, but retreated out of cowardice.

Peterson, 60, was the first U.S. law enforcement officer ever tried criminally for conduct during an on-campus shooting.