Six years after a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in the deadliest school shooting in American history, the scene is being demolition.
Demolition of the former freshman building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is scheduled to begin Friday and will take several weeks to complete, Broward County school officials said in a statement. Rather than using explosives, workers plan to start with the top floor and take down the three-story building piece by piece, officials said.
Officials had originally planned to begin demolishing the structure on Thursday, but flooding and severe weather across South Florida delayed the start of the work.
Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was killed in the shooting and whose 17-year-old son now attends Stoneman Douglas High School, said she had previously been committed to seeing the freshman building demolished.
“It's important that that building is demolished so that not only can I heal, but the whole community can heal,” said Alhadeff, who now serves as chairman of the Broward County Board of Education. “That building is a terrible reminder of the tragedy of when 17 people were killed in a school.”
Alhadeff said the goal is to have the demolition completed before the new school term starts in August.
The February 14, 2018, riot left 14 students and three faculty members dead and 17 injured, shocking the suburban Parkland community and the nation. The shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2022.
The shooting spurred many of the victims' relatives and classmates to become activists: Parents founded groups across the country to lobby for school safety measures, and some students at the school formed the March for Our Lives to campaign for gun control.
Throughout all of this, the freshman building remained intact, fenced off from the rest of the campus. While school shooting scenes are often quickly demolished or cleaned up and reopened to the public, the Stoneman Douglas building was preserved as a crime scene as the shooter went on trial to determine his sentence, which is unusual since most school shooters do not survive.
For years, as law enforcement investigated, prosecutors built their cases against the perpetrators, and politicians toured the site, the building remained largely untouched. Bloodstains and broken glass remained on the floors. Students' laptops and class materials remained on desks. Flowers and balloons were a reminder that the riots took place on Valentine's Day.
Jurors milled around the building in 2022 as they prepared to decide what sentence to recommend for Cruz. The following year, ballistics experts re-enacted the massacre to gather evidence that could be used in the civil trial against a former sheriff's deputy who is accused by the victims' families of failing to protect students and teachers.
Deputy Sheriff Scott Peterson was acquitted of child abuse and other charges in a separate criminal trial.
Relatives of the victims have also been able to visit the site. Max Schachter, who lost his 14-year-old son, Alex, in the attack, walked through the building for the first time in 2023 and has visited many times since. He said he was glad the building was preserved so as many employees as possible could see the devastation. Vice President Kamala Harris toured the building this year with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
“I know the hundreds of employees who rushed to our buildings saved lives and made our schools safer,” Schachter said.
For Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter, Gina, was killed in the shooting, the demolition brings up conflicting emotions: His son worries that the community will forget what happened, while his wife sees the point in showing the building to authorities and explaining what went wrong.
The couple have been back there many times, and on their last visit this spring, they noticed something they'd never noticed before in the Spanish classroom: A poster Gina had made about her family was still hanging on the bulletin board.