PARKLAND, Fla. — A large excavator stretched to the top floor of the three-story building where 17 people were killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, punching its first hole Friday into the classroom where teacher Scott Beigel perished saving students.
Beginning a weekslong demolition, the excavator made a whiny, wrenching noise as it broke off concrete from the building, now no longer needed as evidence in the shooter's trial.
Some victims' family members stood 100 yards away, holding up their cellphones to record the moment.
Students, teachers, victims' families and passersby watch, Friday, June 14, 2024, as crews start the demolition of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. Officials plan to complete the weekslong project before the school's 3,300 students return in August from summer vacation. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Linda Beigel Schulman, the geography teacher's mother, was not among them — she stayed home in New York. She toured the building last year, seeing the comparative religion papers he was grading when the shooting began that Valentine's Day still sitting on his desk. Beigel, who also coached cross country, went into the hallway and herded students to safety in his classroom, doing that as the gunman approached until he was shot.
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She's glad the building is coming down, but had no desire to witness it.
"It was Scott's happy place. He loved teaching there. He loved the kids, he loved everything about the school there. He loved coaching," Beigel Schulman told The Associated Press. "And then it is probably the saddest place that could ever be for me. He thrived there and he died there."
Lori Alhadeff, right, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was one of the 17 people killed in a 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., speaks to the media Friday after watching crews start the demolition of the school building.
The victims' families were invited to hammer off a piece of the building before the demolition began. Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa died, was one who did, finding it cathartic.
"Hammering away at the building helped to release some of my pain," Alhadeff said. After her daughter's death, she was elected to the Broward County school board on a pledge to improve campus safety. She is now its chair.
Officials plan to complete the demolition and cleanup before the school's 3,300 students return in August from summer vacation — to protect the school's other buildings, it wasn't imploded. Most of the school's current students were in elementary school when the shooting happened.
Since the shooting, the building loomed over the campus, locked behind a screened fence that blocked the bottom floor. It was kept up to serve as evidence at the shooter's 2022 penalty trial. Jurors toured its bullet-pocked and blood-stained halls, but spared him a death sentence. He is serving a sentence of life without parole.
Lori Alhadeff holds a photo of her 14-year-old daughter Alyssa, who was among 17 people killed in a 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after watching crews start the demolition of the school building Friday in Parkland, Fla.
Over the past year, some victims' relatives led Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray, school officials, police officers and other invitees from around the country on tours of the building. They mostly demonstrated how improved safety measures such as bullet-resistant 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 gut-wrenching as something of a time capsule of Feb. 14, 2018. Textbooks and laptops sat open on desks, and wilted Valentine's flowers, deflated balloons and abandoned teddy bears were scattered amid broken glass. Those objects were removed before demolition began.
Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex died, said Friday he knows the tours he helped organize will save lives as officials take what they learned and use it to secure schools in their jurisdictions.
"You have to prioritize school safety because you can't teach dead children," he said.
Max Schachter, left, whose 14-year-old son Alex was among the 17 people who died in a 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., speaks to the media Friday after watching crews start the demolition of the school building.
The demolition's start drew about two dozen spectators who stood just off campus, including Dylan Persaud, who was a student in 2018. Standing near the building when the shooting started, he lost seven longtime friends and Beigel, whose class he took. He was glad to see the building coming down.
"It puts a period on the end of the story,"Â Persaud said.Ìý"They should put a nice memorial there for the 17."
Joanne Wallace, a former special education teacher at the school, had mixed feelings watching the building's demolition — she thought the tours were helpful but knows the building's existence brought painful memories to the victims' families.
"I hope this gives the families a bit of peace and comfort," Wallace said. When the shooting started, she was in the parking lot helping her students wait for their parents at the end of the school day.
Former special education teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Joanne Wallace, right, hugs another onlooker Friday as they watch crews demolish a school building where 17 people were killed in a 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Broward County is not alone in taking down a school building after a mass shooting.
In Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School was torn down after the 2012 shooting and replaced. In Texas, officials closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish it. Colorado's Columbine High's library was demolished after the 1999 shooting.
The Broward County school board has not decided what the building will be replaced with. Teachers suggested a practice field for the band, Junior ROTC and other groups, connected by a landscaped pathway to a nearby memorial 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 is useful for 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 will go and remember and be sad," Beigel Schulman said. "Nobody will ever forget what happened in that building. They can't wipe it away. But they can replace it with something that is good."
Yes, it's getting worse: New data shows mass shootings are more frequent
Yes, it's getting worse: New data shows mass shootings are more frequent
was produced by , a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.
On Oct. 25, 2023, a gunman opened fire in Lewiston, Maine, ultimately killing 18 people and injuring 13 more at a bowling alley and a nearby bar. He was after a two-day manhunt. Maine, which has one of the lowest homicide rates in the nation, remains in shock.Ìý
If it feels like U.S. mass shootings have become more frequent, that intuition remains correct, according to data analysis by .Ìý
Under even one of the most conservative definitions of "mass shootings," in which a gunman slaughters four or more strangers in a public place, the number of these crimes has indeed been climbing in the last few years — and they have higher death tolls, as well.
Mass shootings account for just a fraction of the daily toll of firearm deaths in the U.S., where every day in acts of gun violence in 2022.
Our analysis is based on data through 2022 from The Violence Project, a nonprofit research group that uses a narrow definition of mass shootings adopted from the Congressional Research Service, which advises federal lawmakers.
Mass shootings have been on the rise steadily for the past 40 years
Thirty-three of these massacres occurred from 2018 through 2022, compared with 25 from 2013 through 2017, according to The Violence Project data. We compared five-year periods, rather than annual data, so we could more clearly see trends over time. A focus on yearly data would be skewed by 2020, when there were two mass shooting incidents, which researchers attribute to the COVID-19 lockdown.
Still, the latest five-year period saw more attacks than any other comparable timespan dating back to 1966 — an average of about 6.6 mass shootings per year since 2018.
The Violence Project as single incidents in which four or more people are killed (not including the shooter), in public locations, such as schools, stores, or workplaces. It excludes murders that occur as a result of other crimes, such as domestic violence, robbery and gang violence.
At least seven mass shootings so far in 2023 fit this definition:
- , California: 11 dead, 9 injured.
- , California: 7 dead, 1 injured.
- , Tennessee: 6 dead.
- , Kentucky: 5 dead, 8 injured.
- , Texas: 8 dead, 7 injured.
- , Pennsylvania: 5 dead, 2 injured.
- , Maine: 18 dead, 13 injured.
This means 2023 is on par with the number of mass shootings in recent years. The Violence Project counted eight mass shootings in 2021, and seven in 2022.Ìý
While shooting incidents show a gradual upward trend, the number of those killed is rising at an alarming rate
As mass shootings in the U.S. reached a record high, so did the number of deaths and injuries. From 2018 to 2022, perpetrators killed 257 people — close to the 266 fatalities in the five-year period that ended in 2017, and significantly more than any previous period.
The rise in deaths and injuries from 2013 through 2017 was mostly due to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. At a Las Vegas music festival in 2017, a gunman with multiple assault weapons killed at least 60 people. Over 850 people were injured, including scores hurt in a stampede, according to The Violence Project.Ìý
Injuries have likewise risen significantly; one contributing factor: assault weapons
Our analysis shows that in the past five years, assault-style weapons have been used in half of mass shootings. Prior to 2013, they were used in one-third or fewer of all mass shootings.
There is no national, legal definition of a "mass shooting." Several organizations track this form of gun violence, but use different yardsticks.
In 2024, The Marshall Project will update the charts included in this article with full data from 2023. For more on mass shootings and how they are defined, is available.Ìý
