Ex-student kills 17 in bloody Valentine’s Day shooting spree at Florida high school
The suspect, identified as Nikolas Cruz, is now in custody, a Broward County Sheriff’s spokesman said
A 19-year-old gunman returned to the Florida high school where he had once been expelled for disciplinary problems and opened fire with an assault-style rifle on Wednesday, killing 17 people and injuring more than a dozen others before he was arrested, authorities said.
The violence erupted soon before dismissal at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a placid, middle-class community about 72km (45 miles) north of Miami.
Television footage showed images, increasingly familiar in America, of bewildered students streaming out of the building with hands raised in the air, as dozens of police and emergency services personnel swarmed the area.
A horrific situation
Florida’s two US senators, briefed by federal law enforcement officials, said the assailant wore a gas mask as he stalked into the school carrying a rifle, ammunition cartridges and smoke grenades, then pulled a fire alarm, prompting students and staff to pour from their classrooms into hallways.
“There the carnage began,” Senator Bill Nelson told CNN.
Senator Marco Rubio gave a similar account on Twitter.
A chilling mobile phone video clip broadcast by CBS News showed a brief scene of what the network said was the shooting in progress from inside a classroom, where several students were seen huddled or lying on the floor surrounded by mostly empty desks.