Parkland, Florida.- A large excavator extended to the top floor of the three-story building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, drilling its first hole this Friday in the classroom where teacher Scott Beigel perished saving the students.
Beginning a weeks-long demolition, the bulldozer made a moaning, heart-wrenching noise as it tore through the concrete of the building, which is now no longer needed as evidence in the shooter’s trial. Some relatives of the victims were 90 meters away, holding their cell phones to record the moment.
Linda Beigel Schulman, the geography teacher’s mother, was not among them: she stayed home in New York. She toured the building last year and saw that the comparative religion papers he was grading when the shooting began that Valentine’s Day were still on his desk. Beigel, who was also a cross country coach, went out into the hallway and gathered students in his classroom to safety.
He is glad that the building is collapsing, but he had no desire to witness it.
“It was Scott’s happy place. He loved teaching there. He loved the kids, he loved everything about school. He loved coaching,” Beigel Schulman told The Associated Press. “And then it’s probably the saddest place it could be for me. There he prospered and there he died.”
The victims’ families were invited to hammer out a piece of the building before demolition began. Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, died, was one of those who did, and she found it cathartic.
“Hammering the building helped me release some of my pain,” said Alhadeff, who was elected to the Broward County school board after her daughter’s death on a promise to improve campus safety. She is now its president.
Officials plan to complete the demolition and cleanup before the school’s 3,300 students return from summer break in August – to protect the school’s other buildings from imploding. Most of the current students were in elementary school when the shooting occurred.
Since the shooting, the building has loomed over the campus, enclosed behind a chain-link fence that blocked the ground floor. It was preserved to serve as evidence in the trial of the perpetrator of the 2022 shots. The members of the jury walked through its corridors full of bullets and blood stains, but they avoided the death penalty. He is serving a life sentence without parole.
Over the past year, some of the victims’ families have led Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray, school officials, police officers and other guests from around the country on guided tours of the building. In most cases, they have shown 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 have taken the tour have described it as heartbreaking as a kind of time capsule of February 14, 2018. The textbooks and laptops were open on the desks, and the wilted Valentine’s flowers, the deflated balloons and abandoned teddy bears were scattered among broken glass. Those objects were removed before demolition began.
Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex died, said Friday that he knows the visits he helped organize will save lives as officials take what they learned and use it to tighten schools in their jurisdictions.
“School safety must be given priority, because you cannot teach dead children,” he said.
The start of the demolition drew about two dozen onlookers standing just off campus, including Dylan Persaud, who was a student in 2018. He had been standing near the building when the shooting began, and lost seven long-time friends. time and Beigel, whose class he took. He was glad to see the building collapse.
“It puts an end to the story. They should put up a nice memorial for the 17,” Persaud said.
Joanne Wallace, a former special education teacher at the school, had mixed feelings about seeing the building demolished: She thought the tours were helpful, but she knows the building’s existence brought back painful memories for the victims’ families.
“I hope this gives the families some peace and comfort,” Wallace said. When the shooting began, she was in the parking lot helping her students wait for her parents at the end of the school day.
Broward County is not alone in dismantling a school building following a mass shooting. In Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School was torn down after the 2012 shooting and replaced. In Texas, authorities closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting and plan to demolish it. The library at Columbine High School in Colorado was demolished after the 1999 shooting.
The Broward County school board has not decided what the building will be replaced with. The teachers suggested a practice field for the band, Junior ROTC and other groups, connected by a landscaped path to a nearby monument that was erected a few years ago. Several of the students killed belonged to the band or Junior ROTC.
Alhadeff said the school district will put something there that will be useful to future students – a sentiment Schachter and Beigel Schulman seconded.
“I want a place where kids can go and be happy, not a place where kids go and remember and be sad,” Beigel Schulman said. “No one will ever forget what happened in that building. They can’t erase it. But they can replace it with something good.”
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