Valentine’s Day is a day dedicated to love, but it will forever be marred by grief in Parkland, Florida. Apparently, by design.
It was six years ago today that 14 students and three teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School lost their lives in a school shooting.
The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, reportedly told a psychologist he picked Valentine’s Day for the massacre because no one loved him. He wanted to ruin the holiday forever for anyone associated with the school, AP reported.
Spared the death penalty by a Florida jury, Cruz is now serving 17 consecutive life sentences.
Amidst the loss and lingering grief, there are lessons to be learned. Lessons that Rabun County’s newest sheriff’s investigator hopes to use to improve school safety in Northeast Georgia and beyond.
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Learning from mistakes
Kevin Angell got to know well the father of one of the students killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. He met Max Schacter through LinkedIn a few years ago. Schacter’s son Alex was killed in the Parkland shooting. Since then, he has become a school safety advocate, lobbying to keep students and parents around the world from suffering the same fate as his family.
When they met, Angell was the senior law enforcement training officer at the Georgia Public Training Safety Center (GPSTC) in Forsyth. He seized on the opportunity to include Schacter in one of GPSTC’s school safety conferences. Together, they produced a one-hour training podcast focused on a parent’s perspective of school shootings and their aftermath.
In the podcast, Schacter shared his views on what he believes law enforcement and the school system did right on that day in February 2018 and what they did wrong. Angell says the still-grieving father gave an honest, unfiltered, sometimes critical assessment of how things were handled that day.
The video-recorded podcast “Turning Anguish Into Advocacy – a Father’s Journey to Make Schools Safer After the Parkland School Shooting” went viral within law enforcement circles and is now used as a training video.
“If you’re a forward-thinking person who’s trying to do better, then you’re not afraid of that (criticism). You’ll hear that type of criticism and do better,” says Angell.
Touring the crime scene
The two men’s association and shared mission to improve school safety led to a unique opportunity. At Schacter’s urging, the Broward County school board, district attorney, and sheriff’s office opened up the sealed school building where the shooting took place. They gave 100 invited law officers and parents of the victims the opportunity to see firsthand where things unfolded and how.
Angell was among them.
The group toured the 1200 building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on October 14, 2023. Secured as a crime scene on the day of the shooting and closed to all but a select few since then, Angell says students’ homework and laptops were still on the desks. Assignments were still written on the whiteboards. Shell casings lay on the floor where they fell.
It was as if time stopped: For 17 people, it did. Those who toured the building that day are among the few who have walked where many of the victims drew their last breaths.
As officials guided the visitors through the hallways and classrooms, they described in detail the sequence of events. Angell says he was astonished by the devastation. He was struck by how the bullets were able to penetrate a metal door, a laptop, or a whiteboard, strike a victim, and then hit a concrete wall.
Even more than the devastation, the bravery exhibited that day is what stirs Angell’s soul. He ponders the bravery it must have taken for some students to stop and hold doors open so that others could escape. He marvels at the brave teachers who went into the hallways, trying to protect their students.
12 minutes of carnage; a lifetime of lessons
It took Cruz just 12 minutes with an AR-15 rifle to destroy 17 lives and forever change many more. He fled the scene by blending in with the evacuating students.
As Angell walked those same halls five years later, he gathered lessons he will now use to ensure “we’re getting the most effective and most innovative training that is available.”
Over the years, crime scene technicians, prosecutors, and jurors have toured the 1200 building. Some parents have been allowed in to collect belongings their children left behind. Since last October, lawmakers from several states have toured the site, which soon will be gone.
The place where the worst high school shooting in U.S. history occurred is scheduled to be demolished in June.
Touring the 1200 building was an emotionally charged experience, but it’s one Kevin Angell says he is fortunate to have had.
“It was important to me to bring that back to Georgia and make sure that every law enforcement officer that is assigned in a position like that just does a self-check and says, ‘Hey, am I ready for this? Am I willing to do this? Am I willing to be the sole mitigation for someone running around with a high-powered rifle?'”
