Florida shooting brings back horrific memories for students from Parkland
Ilana Badiner, now 21, was at the middle school next to Stoneman Douglas High School when she and her classmates were locked down and escorted out by a SWAT team in 2018. 'The whole scene after was the same: People calling their parents, texting, police officers,' Badiner told The Washington Post on Thursday. 'This is kind of the new normal,' she said.
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Badiner described her frustration at how this had become 'kind of the new normal,' reflecting the grim reality that students in states including Florida and Michigan have faced growing up with gun violence.
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Survivors of the Parkland shooting banded together to form March for Our Lives, a youth-led movement to end gun violence. In the wake of the FSU incident, some expressed shock that such an event could happen again.
'There are kids from my high school in Parkland, FL who were freshmen during the MSD shooting and are now seniors at FSU during this current mass shooting,' Cameron Kasky, one of the founders of March for Our Lives, wrote on X. 'Welcome to Florida, welcome to America.'
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The organization said in a statement that the FSU shooting 'hits especially close to home for us.'
The group said: '7 years ago, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School hid in their classrooms while their teachers and classmates were senselessly gunned down. Today, some of those same students were at FSU when gunfire erupted. No one should have to go through this twice, while their leaders do nothing but offer empty words.'
Josh Gallagher, a law student at Florida State University, wrote in a post on X that he lived through the Parkland shooting and 'never thought it would hit close to home again.'
'Then I'm in the FSU Law Library and hear an alarm: active shooter on campus. No matter your politics, we need to meet - and something has to change,' he said.
Anna Griffin, 18, a freshman from Washington, D.C., who is studying at FSU, said she overheard another student saying it was her second school shooting, having had experienced one in high school. 'I've never experienced anything like this,' Griffin said. 'I'm definitely still pretty freaked out.'
Another FSU student, Angel Dejesus, told the Tallahassee Democrat he was hiding inside a classroom when things got 'much more serious' and a student who lived through the Parkland shooting entered the room. 'He was, like, 'Man, I never thought this would happen again,'' Dejesus said.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jamie was killed in the Parkland shooting, told MSNBC in a television interview that he had spent the afternoon speaking to 'dozens' of people who have now been 'part of two school shootings in their lives.'
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'To say I've spent the afternoon shaking would be an understatement,' he said.
Thursday's shooting is not the first to occur at FSU. In 2014, a graduate opened fire at the library, wounding three people.
Last year more than 31,000 children across 21 states experienced a school shooting, according to a Washington Post tracker - a figure that does not include shootings at colleges and universities.
Jonathan Edwards contributed to this report.
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