PARKLAND, Fla. – A crew is scheduled to begin demolishing the three-story classroom building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The victims’ families were invited to watch the first blows and hammer a piece themselves if they so desired. Officials plan to complete the week-long project before the school’s 3,300 students return from summer vacation in August. Most were in elementary school when the shooting happened.
The building was kept for evidence in the shooter’s 2022 sentencing trial. Jurors walked through its bullet-ridden, blood-stained hallways but spared him a death sentence. He is serving a life sentence without parole.
Broward County is not alone in demolishing a school building following a mass shooting. In Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School was demolished after the 2012 shooting and replaced. In Texas, authorities closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting and plan to demolish it. Columbine High in Colorado had its library demolished after the 1999 shooting.
Over the past year, family members of the victims have taken Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, school officials, police officers and about 500 other guests from around the country on tours of the building. They mainly demonstrated how improved security measures such as bulletproof glass in door windows, a better alarm system and doors that lock from the inside could have saved lives.
Those who took the tour called it harrowing, like a kind of time capsule from February 14, 2018. Textbooks and laptops lay open on tables, and wilted Valentine’s Day flowers, deflated balloons, and abandoned teddy bears lay. scattered among broken glass. . These objects have now been removed.
The Broward County School Board has not yet decided how the building will be replaced. Teachers suggested a practice field for the band, Junior ROTC and other groups, connected by a landscaped path to a nearby memorial that was erected a few years ago. Several of the dead students belonged to the band or Junior ROTC.
Some parents want the site to be turned into a memorial.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
