Bio: Hi, My name is phillip and I am a sophmore at Stoneman Douglas, a florida highschool that was shot up by gunman nicholas cruiz. Last year, nicholas cruiz took the lives of 17 people including our football coach at 2;40 PM on february 14th, 2018 AKA(VALENTINES DAY).
Background: Being a florida grown kid, I would regularly ride my bike with my friends to the everglades holiday national park, I can distinctly remember that one day around winter break in 2017 I saw a man carrying an AR-15 style gun while walking around the everglades. I remember him shooting into the water, and even shooting at birds. Me and my friends decided it best to not confront him. So we rode away. This later turned out to be the man that shot and killed many beloved students, faculty, and staff at my highschool. This is just a reminder that PLEASE IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING!
What Happened: I remember the morning of valentines day, I woke up and (since i get pissy being woken up at 7 am to get ready for school (which starts at 7:40 am)) I yelled at my mother for waking me up so early. I admit i'm not very nice to her in the mornings. She dropped me off at shool and the day seemed normal as any other day. But, today kids were giving eachother hugs, kisses, candy etc.... (Since it's valentines day). I got out of my mom's car and headed to my biology class where we were learning osmosis and diffusion and shit like that (I HATE BIO). (BTW in broward county highschools, we have 8 total classes, one of them being a study hall, and we have split them up into A and B days. With 4 periods on one and another 4 periods the next day).Fast Forward to 8th period, I was in Algebra 1 and as we were wrapping up our lesson the fire alarm goes off. *FIRE ALARM NOISE*, everyone sighed and got angry as we had just completed a fire drill earlier and it's really hot outside, people get sweaty pretty quickly. as i headed downstairs from the second floor, *BOOM BOOM BOOM* I start hearing what sounded like a hammer banging against metal... Except it wasn't a hammer. I headed back with a stampeding crowd back to my algebra class where about 7 other students made it (The rest were running as fast they could away from the noise). I had no idea what was going on until I saw bullet holes in the cabinets on my algebra class. The wall with the door leading into our rooms isn't completely cement or stone etc... It is actually like a plaster of some sort which can easily be shot through. I waited in terror as the teacher of our class kept on trying to quiet down some of the girls who were crying so that the gunman wouldnt discover us. It was dark in the room and 30 minutes later I hear a pounding on the door *BOOM BOOM BOOM, OPEN UP ITS THE POLICE* the swat had come to evacuate the building. It felt like hours had gone by when In reality it only took about 5 minutes for Nicholas Cruiz to ruin so many lives. The one person dear to me that I lost was Helena Ramsay RIP.
The message I am trying to convey. In this day and age I constantly get reminded of the hate that the internet is capable of. Catastrophes like this one started because sheriff scott israel's son bullied nicholas cruiz in highschool years ago. Stop the hate now and save lives later. Thank You