‘We’re lucky. We’re alive,’ teacher says

PARKLAND Teacher Ernie Rospierski attended the funeral for 14-year-old student Alyssa Alhadeff on Friday. He has eight more to go.

Rospierski lost nine friends in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead.

He considers himself lucky he was not among them.

During the attack, Rospierski came within 20 feet of the shooter while he and his terrified students were locked outside their third-floor classroom. Moments earlier, they’d left for a fire drill but when they heard gunfire, they came running back to a locked door.

At first, Rospierski thought blanks were being fired as part of a surprise drill.

“I see one of my kids get hit and I say to myself, ‘This is no drill.’ He points his gun at me and starts firing,” Rospierski recalled Friday.

One bullet grazed his cheek. Another grazed his hip.

Rospierski and his students crowded behind a wall leading to their room. When the shooting stopped, he peeked his head out and saw the shooter reloading. “Run!” he yelled. He and his students dashed to the stairs, but Rospierski stayed behind in the stairwell to hold the door shut.

“That’s what you do,” he said. “You help people.”

He spotted a girl face down on the ground. He shook her, but she didn’t move and had no pulse.

With the gunman still shooting, he raced down to the second floor and hid in a locked bathroom.

And now, his calendar is filled with funerals.

“I was holding onto another former student during the funeral,” he said of Friday’s ceremony. “My wife [a fellow teacher at Stoneman Douglas] was behind me. It was rough. We’re lucky. We’re here. We’re alive.”

sbryan@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4554