PARKLAND, Fla. (NEWSnet/AP) — Demolition begins Thursday of the building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Crews will perform destruction piece-by-piece. Implosion would damage nearby structures. Officials plan to complete the project before the school’s 3,300 students return from summer vacation in August. Most were in elementary school when the shooting occurred.
The victims’ families have been invited to witness the first blows to the building and hammer off a piece if they wish. They have divergent views about the demolition.
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“I want the building gone,” said Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa died there. Alhadeff was elected to Broward County school board after the shooting and now serves as its chair. “It’s one more step in the healing process for me and my family. My son still goes to school there and he has to walk past that building where his sister died.”
Other parents, including Max Schachter and Tony Montalto, hoped the building would be preserved. Over the past year, they, Alhadeff and others have led tours, mostly to demonstrate how improved safety measures could have saved lives.
Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex died in the incident, said he believes improvements that visitors implemented in other school districts would justify keeping the building.
“We have museums and we have (historic) sites that that have stood for individuals to learn and to understand what happened,” Schachter said.
Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina died in the shooting, would like to see a memorial take over the space, replacing the earlier one, which he said was supposed to be temporary.
“We are part of the community, too,” he said.
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