Nine Congress members to tour Parkland ahead of school shooting reenactment
Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) has organized a tour of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the site of a 2018 mass shooting that killed 17. The tour is scheduled for Friday, right before a reenactment of the shooting.
Though Moskowitz, a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) invited all members of Congress, seven took the congressmen up on the offer. They will tour alongside the families of some of the victims, according to CNN. After the tour, there will be a discussion about school safety.
“It’s important for folks in Congress, my colleagues, to see what happens when a school shooting comes to your neighborhood,” Moskowitz told CNN. “It’s going to be a very emotional day.”
Following the tour and discussion will be the reenactment of the shooting. The reenactment is part of a civil lawsuit against Scot Peterson, a former sheriff's deputy. Peterson, the school's resource officer, did not enter the building during the shooting. Peterson maintains that echoing made him unable to determine where the shots were coming from; the reenactment sets out to show whether or not this is possible.
The reenactment will include experts firing the same type of automatic rifle the shooter used, and fire alarms will also sound at approximately the same times as during the actual shooting, according to CNN.
This June, Peterson was found not guilty of all charges in a criminal trial for not attempting to interfere in the Parkland shooting. He faced 11 charges including seven counts of felony child neglect and three counts of culpable negligence, according to CNN. He also was charged with one count of perjury for telling investigators he'd only heard a few gunshots and didn't see students running away from the shooting. Plaintiff's attorneys allege Peterson heard "upwards of 70 shots and knew where they were coming from."
“At the end of the day, Scot Peterson has to live with himself that he didn’t go in those building. He didn’t go in the building and save those kids and that’s a decision forever. He’ll live with and the public will always hold him out to be a coward. To me, that’s just as bad as being criminally guilty in the court,” Hunter Pollack, brother of Parkland shooting victim Meadow Pollack, told WINK-TV. “Hopefully the civil trial will hold them accountable. That’s the purpose of the reenactment is just to show the jury that where Peterson was standing, he could hear the gunshots going off. I think it’s necessary.”
The building is set to be demolished by the Broward School District.