Parkland School Massacre

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Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (2008)

When school massacre Parkland shot on 14 February 2018, the 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz at his former school, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) in Parkland ( Florida ), 14 students and three adults. Shortly afterwards he was arrested; the next day he confessed the act. 15 injured came to hospitals.

A week later, it became known that an armed, uniformed deputy was patrolling the school premises at the time of the crime . But he did not go into the building when the numerous shots rang out. At around the same time, the incumbent US President Trump advocated arming teachers and the US gun lobby organization National Rifle Association for using more armed guards in schools. Police from the neighboring town of Coral Springs said that at least three other armed deputies besides Peterson were not in the building when they arrived .

In terms of the number of fatalities, the act was the third worst act in this period after the mass murder in Las Vegas in October 2017 with 58 and the rampage in Sutherland Springs in November 2017 with 26 deaths.

The act resulted in numerous protests against gun laws in the United States .

Sequence of events

Cruz entered the MSD at 2:21 p.m. local time just before school ended with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle , several cartridge magazines and a gas mask . There he set off the fire alarm. A test alarm had already been carried out that day; the second alarm caused confusion among students and teachers. Cruz set off several smoke bombs and shot at random students and teachers who had left their classrooms because of the fire alarm and smoke grenades.

After Cruz fired over 200 times in 6 minutes, he left his gun on the third floor of the building. He mingled with the fleeing students around 2:27 p.m. and left the school premises. According to the sheriff in charge , he first went to a Walmart shopping mall, where he bought a soft drink and went to two fast-food restaurants. At around 3:40 p.m. he was approached by a police officer about 2 miles from the school in the neighboring community of Coral Springs and replied that he was the perpetrator. He let himself be arrested without resistance.

Perpetrator

Nikolas Jacob Cruz (2018)

Nikolas Cruz, born on September 24, 1998, was adopted together with a brother soon after his birth . When Nikolas was six years old, his adoptive father died of a heart attack . His adoptive mother died on November 1, 2017 of flu and pneumonia ; after that he moved to a befriended family.

Cruz was known as an outsider and loner who presented himself with knives, firearms and killed animals on the social network Instagram . During his school days he stood out for his impulsive and aggressive behavior towards classmates and teachers. Classmates are said to have stayed away from him out of fear. In the meantime he is said to have been in psychiatric treatment. After being expelled from school, he worked as a cashier in several general stores. According to a colleague, he was popular there.

A year before the killing spree, Cruz had been expelled from the MSD for disciplinary reasons; a direct warning about the perpetrator in January 2018 had not been passed on to the local police. A state commission found that Cruz had been researching the rampage at Columbine High School prior to the crime .

After the rampage

Cruz immediately confessed to the crime and has been charged with 17 murder. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death . It was unclear whether the defense was pleading insanity . One of their public defenders said that Cruz regretted the act, was fully aware of it and was a broken person. In April 2018, it was announced that Cruz wanted to hand over his inheritance to survivors of the massacre.

US President Donald Trump tweeted his condolences after the bloodbath. He wrote that no student should feel unsafe in a school. This was heavily criticized by parts of the public and the press in the US because Trump and the Republican Party vehemently refuse to introduce stricter gun laws. Since the rampage at Sandy Hook School in December 2012, it was the 1607th time in the United States that a perpetrator injured four or more people at once. Trump described the perpetrator as "mentally disturbed" and urged the public to inform the authorities of such incidents. He initially refused to speak publicly about the massacre. He later gave a short televised address. He did not respond to demands for a tightening of the gun law. Trump announced a visit to Florida and ordered a four-day mourning flag .

Two days after the massacre, the FBI admitted that on January 5, 2018, a caller gave clues about the later perpetrator, who pointed out his infatuation with guns and said that Cruz might be planning a robbery on a school. The caller had also informed the authorities about the gun possession, the intentions to kill and about Cruz 'disturbing posts on social networks. Florida Governor Rick Scott called this an "unacceptable failure" by the FBI and asked FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to resign. The sheriff in charge admitted that the police had received more than 20 calls to Cruz in the past few years. His mother had called the local police several times about his violence.

In the state of Florida , the Republican Party (GOP) has a majority on most political bodies . The gun laws there are considered particularly lax. Trump presented himself as a gun enthusiast during his presidential election campaign and promised in a speech to the politically influential National Rifle Association (NRA) that if he was elected, he would stand up for gun owners' rights. The NRA supported Trump's election campaign.

Seven days after the massacre, the Florida House of Representatives rejected a stricter gun law by 71:36 votes. The GOP has 78 members there; 7 of them apparently voted with the opposition.

On February 13, just one day before the crime in Parkland, police arrested an 18-year-old man in Everett , Washington , who was also planning to commit a killing spree at his school, ACES High School. His grandmother had reported to the authorities, who had found information in her grandson's diary . During the search, the officers found a semi-automatic rifle and self-made explosive devices.

On March 11, 2018, Trump moved away from his proposal to increase the minimum age for certain weapons purchases from 18 to 21 years.

Boycott NRA

As part of the Boycott NRA (“ Boycotts the NRA”) campaign, which was initiated by surviving students from the massacre , numerous companies stopped supporting the NRA or benefiting its members, e. For example, Delta Air Lines , First National Bank of Omaha , MetLife and Chubb insurance companies , Symantec software company, and Hertz and Enterprise Rent-A-Car car rental companies . Other companies such as the sporting goods retailer Dick's or the retail chain Walmart restricted their arms sales or tightened their respective rules.

Bump stocks

Emma González with Ted Deutch , MP in the US House of Representatives

On the day before the “ March for Our Lives ” on March 23, 2018 , Donald Trump tweeted on the flight to his vacation and weekend residence Mar-a-Lago that there would be a law in the USA banning “ bump stocks ”, semiautomatic weapons or devices that enable semiautomatic firing systems to quasi-fully automatic firing, making them machine guns and thus illegal. According to the bill, gun owners would either have to destroy these parts or give them to government agencies. Among other things, with "Bump Fire" in the mass murder in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, 58 people were killed and 851 others injured.

Protests

Emma González

At a demonstration by students from the school concerned three days after the massacre, 19-year-old student Emma González said in a speech, for example. B: “When the president tells me in the face that it was a terrible tragedy (…) and that there is nothing to be done, I ask him how much money he got from the National Rifle Association. [...] I know it: $ 30 million. "And also to the address of US President Trump and other politicians:" Be ashamed! " a. stricter gun laws.

Never Again MSD

The survivors Cameron Kasky, Emma González and David Hogg founded the organization Never Again MSD to organize protests and public relations and immediately turned to members of parliament personally . They became the leading voices in the 2018 gun control protests in the United States.

7,000 pairs of shoes in front of the Capitol

Action 7000 pairs of shoes in front of the Capitol

On March 13, 2018, activists placed 7,000 pairs of shoes on the lawn in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC - one pair for every student who had been armed since the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012 in the United States had been killed. Some of the shoes were donated by families who lost their children in school massacres in the United States.

National Walkout Day / School Walkout Rally

On 14 March 2018 a left under the National School Walkout Rally (about "National Raus-out-of-school rally") at the National Day Walkout at 3,000 schools across the country more than 1 million students at 10:00 their classrooms and commemorated the 17 victims of Parkland or other victims of US school massacres in various forms and with various actions for 17 minutes. The action was organized by Empower , the youth organization of the Women's March on Washington movement.

March for Our Lives

March for our Lives in Washington, DC

On March 24, 2018, the March for our Lives (also # march4ourlives ) was held as a highlight of the protests, initiated mainly by schoolchildren and students, for stricter gun laws and against the influence of the NRA in the USA ; More than 700 corresponding campaigns were announced in all 50 US states as well as in around 40 countries on all other continents and thus at over 840 locations worldwide. Several hundred thousand people attended the main event in Washington DC . According to surveys, a third of US youth wanted to participate directly or indirectly in the action.

Associated with the protests was an action with the motto Vote them out (“ Vote them out ”).

Title Time magazine

The Time magazine of April 2, 2018 had on the title, the word ENOUGH and as the title picture Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, David Hogg and two other survivors of the massacre. The title story was titled The School Shooting Generation Has Had Enough .

Others

Shortly after the massacre, the gun control organization Everytown for Gun Safety tweeted the claim that Parkland had been the 18th school shoot in the United States in 2018. Numerous twitterers and media spread this number. The Washington Post criticized that some of these 18 incidents were not actual school shoots.

Some Republican politicians in the US state of Florida suggested that the sheriff resign. The NRA claimed he had neglected official duties; this should be examined more closely.

In social media such as the blogging platform Tumblr , a fan base has formed around the perpetrator , whose members refer to themselves as "cruzers" and make his person the subject of fan art and fiction . Cruz shares this appropriation with the perpetrators of the rampage at Columbine High School , whose fans call themselves " Columbiner ".

The regional newspaper 'South Florida Sun Sentinel' received the Pulitzer Prize 2019 in the category 'Public Service' for its reporting after the massacre in April 2019 . The Pulitzer Committee said the newspaper exposed failures by law enforcement officers and those in charge at the school before and after the massacre.

Greta Thunberg's school strike for the climate, which she began on August 20, 2018 and which was soon followed by many other students around the world, from which the Fridays for Future movement grew, was inspired by the National School Walkout Rally in response to the Parkland school massacre.

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : Parkland rampage  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Accused Florida school shooter confesses
  2. ^ Timeline of the slaughter
  3. ↑ spiegel.de February 23, 2018: Armed deputy sheriff waited in front of the school building
  4. ↑ washingtonpost.com February 22, 2018: Armed sheriff's deputy stayed outside Florida school while mass killing took place
  5. ↑ washingtonpost.com February 22, 2018: Trump doubles down on arming some teachers, defends NRA
  6. ↑ washingtonpost.com February 22, 2018: NRA goes on the offensive after Parkland shooting, assailing media and calling for more armed school security
  7. ↑ Broward sheriff investigating claims that multiple deputies failed to enter Parkland school 'when they should have'
  8. ↑ The Florida shooter: The violence of Nikolas Cruz . In: Spiegel Online . February 15, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 4, 2018]).
  9. ↑ The perpetrator legally owned his weapon In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 15, 2018
  10. ↑ Parkland in Florida: At least 17 dead after high school shots. In: Spiegel Online , February 15, 2018
  11. ↑ The outbreak of violence by Nikolas Cruz In: Spiegel Online , February 15, 2018
  12. ↑ Doug Stanglin / Mike James: Florida school shooting suspect ordered a drink at Subway after deadly assault. USA Today , February 15, 2018, accessed February 16, 2018 .
  13. ↑ FAZ.net February 19, 2018: "Had no idea that a monster lived under our roof" (based on sun-sentinel.com )
  14. ↑ Florida school shooting suspect was ex-student who was flagged as threat. In: miamiherald.com . February 15, 2018, accessed February 15, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Nikolas Cruz, Florida Shooting Suspect, Was Expelled From School. In: nytimes.com . February 15, 2018, accessed February 15, 2018 .
  16. ^ What to Know About Alleged Florida School Shooter Nikolas Cruz. In: time.com . February 15, 2018, accessed February 15, 2018 .
  17. ↑ a b FBI ignored warning about the gunman. Retrieved April 4, 2018 (Austrian German).
  18. ↑ FOCUS Online: "Could school short and small shoot": FBI was warned of parkland killers . In: FOCUS Online . ( focus.de [accessed on April 4, 2018]).
  19. ^ WORLD: Parkland rampage: The disturbing details from the life of Nikolas C. In: DIE WELT . February 18, 2018 ( welt.de [accessed April 4, 2018]).
  20. ^ David Smiley: Parkland shooter researched Columbine as he planned attack, state commission reveals. In: The Miami Herald. February 15, 2018, accessed August 25, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Florida Assassin: Before Arrest at McDonald's . In: Spiegel Online . February 16, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 4, 2018]).
  22. ↑ Florida: 19-year-old admits high school rampage. Zeit Online , February 16, 2018, accessed February 16, 2018 .
  23. ^ Suspect in Florida shooting could face death penalty for 17 counts of premeditated murder . In: Business Insider Germany . ( businessinsider.de [accessed February 15, 2018]).
  24. ↑ Florida shooter wants to cede inheritance to massacre survivors. Retrieved April 12, 2018 .
  25. ↑ America's latest school slaughter. In: economist.com. February 15, 2018, accessed February 15, 2018 .
  26. ↑ The rampage in Florida: Trump assumes that perpetrators have psychological problems. Stuttgarter Nachrichten , February 15, 2018, accessed on February 16, 2018 .
  27. ↑ Tweet from Donald Trump
  28. ↑ Criticism of Trump's behavior
  29. ↑ www.usatoday.com: Trump tweets after Florida school shooting, but does not stand before cameras
  30. ↑ www.whitehouse.gov: Statement by President Trump on the Shooting in Parkland, Florida
  31. ↑ spiegel.de
  32. ↑ CNN.com: Video of the televised address
  33. ↑ sueddeutsche.de / Thorsten Denkler: Better to first declare the perpetrator crazy (analysis of the speech)
  34. ↑ US President Trump announces a visit to Florida after the school massacre. Epoch Times , February 16, 2018, accessed February 16, 2018 .
  35. ↑ Donald Trump : Proclamations: Presidential Proclamation Honoring the Victims of the Tragedy in Parkland, Florida. The White House , February 15, 2018, accessed February 16, 2018 .
  36. ↑ FBI admits errors in advance
  37. ↑ FBI Statement on the Shooting in Parkland, Florida (February 16, 2018)
  38. ↑ a b c Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): US students angry at gun lobby | Currently America | DW | February 18, 2018. Retrieved February 19, 2018 .
  39. ^ Washingtonpost.com: The FBI said it failed to act on a tip about the suspected Florida school shooter's potential for violence
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  41. ↑ zeit.de: "That doesn't happen anywhere else"
  42. ↑ zeit.de: Trump knows who he owes loyalty to
  43. ↑ Metro.co.uk: List of US politicians who receive millions from the National Rifle Association
  44. ↑ spiegel.de: Parliament rejects stricter gun law - schoolchildren burst into tears
  45. ↑ School massacre prevented? - Grandmother warns the police about her grandson . In: T-online.de , February 15, 2018.
  46. ↑ Caleb Hutton: Everett student's journal: 'I'm learning from past shooters' . In: HeraldNet , February 14, 2018, accessed February 27, 2018.
  47. ↑ FAZ.net March 12, 2018: Trump rows back with stricter gun laws
  48. ↑ Links to the gun lobby: US companies stop cooperating with NRA . In: Spiegel Online . February 23, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 24, 2018]).
  49. ↑ Julian Heissler: US gun lobby: You take it on with the NRA . In: The time . March 5, 2018, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed March 24, 2018]).
  50. ↑ a b US gun law - Hundreds of thousands expected to demo - government wants to ban bump stocks . In: Deutschlandfunk . ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed on March 24, 2018]).
  51. ↑ Restricting US Gun Law: Trump Administration Bans "Bump Stocks". www.n-tv.de, March 24, 2018, accessed on March 24, 2018 .
  52. ↑ Girlfriend of the perpetrator should clarify the motive: Investigators hope for clarification orf.at, October 4, 2017, accessed October 4, 2017.
  53. ↑ zeit.de , January 21, 2018: Amok shooters injured significantly more people than previously known ; see also the preliminary final report here .
  54. ↑ The survivor of the rampage criticizes Trump: "Shame on you" - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Video . In: Spiegel Online . February 18, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 25, 2018]).
  55. ↑ Badische Zeitung: Survivors after the school massacre in Florida on Trump: "You are ashamed" - Panorama - Badische Zeitung . ( badische-zeitung.de [accessed on March 24, 2018]).
  56. ↑ tagesschau.de: Emma Gonzalez: The face of the student protest. Retrieved on February 21, 2018 (German).
  57. ↑ Teens stage White House 'lie-in' to protest lack of gun control . In: NY Daily News . ( nydailynews.com [accessed February 21, 2018]).
  58. ↑ Grace Ahn, Tyler Mitchell, Emma González, Rubi Jones, Coco Cassiba: Dear Lawmakers, You're Killing Us . In: Teen Vogue . ( teenvogue.com [accessed March 24, 2018]).
  59. ^ Badische Zeitung: Uprising of the Columbine generation - foreign countries - Badische Zeitung . ( badische-zeitung.de [accessed on March 24, 2018]).
  60. ↑ US Parliament: Why are there 7,000 pairs of shoes in front of the Capitol? In: Spiegel Online . March 13, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 22, 2018]).
  61. ^ "March for our lives" in Washington - March against gun violence and for tougher laws . In: Deutschlandfunk . ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed on March 21, 2018]).
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  63. ↑ Vivian Yee, Alan Blinder: National School Walkout: Thousands Protest Against Gun Violence Across the US In: The New York Times . March 14, 2018, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 21, 2018]).
  64. ^ Sarah Larimer: What it looks like when students across the country walk out over gun violence . In: Washington Post . March 14, 2018, ISSN  0190-8286 ( washingtonpost.com [accessed March 21, 2018]).
  65. ^ Students across US protest 'inaction' on guns with school walkout . In: NBC News . ( nbcnews.com [accessed March 21, 2018]).
  66. ^ Women's March Youth Empower. Retrieved March 31, 2018 .
  67. ^ National Walkout Headcount . In: Google Docs . ( google.com [accessed March 31, 2018]).
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  73. ↑ As in the Vietnam War , Spiegel Online, March 24, 2018
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  75. ↑ Register to Vote to End Gun Violence | March For Our Lives - March 24, 2018 . In: March For Our Lives . ( marchforourlives.com [accessed March 24, 2018]).
  76. ^ How Parkland Students Are Taking on Politicians in the Gun Control Battle. Retrieved March 23, 2018 .
  77. ^ Washingtonpost.com : No, there haven't been 18 school shootings in 2018. That number is flat wrong
  78. ↑ everytownresearch.org , click on "2018".
  79. ↑ washingtonpost.com , February 25, 2018: Florida lawmakers call for suspension of Broward sheriff after Parkland massacre as he defends 'amazing leadership'
  80. ↑ Dina Temple-Raston: 'Cruzers' and the Dark World of School shooter Culture Online. In: New York Magazine . April 6, 2018, accessed August 22, 2018 .
  81. ↑ www.pulitzer.org
  82. ↑ Greta Thunberg. Retrieved July 20, 2020 .

Coordinates: 26 ° 18 ′ 16.1 ″  N , 80 ° 16 ′ 7.8 ″  W.