FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The students, their faces blurred, run silently from the building at a Florida high school where their classmates are being slaughtered. A staff member, his entire body pixilated, rushes up in a golf cart and heads inside. The deputy assigned to the school takes cover, never entering. Other officers rush in, assault rifles and handguns at the ready.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office released videos Wednesday from five cameras surrounding the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 14 students and three staff members died Feb. 14 during the first three minutes of a shooting rampage. The release came hours after the Florida Supreme Court refused to hear a motion from the Broward school board seeking to block it.
The silent videos give a disjointed view of what was going on outside the three-story freshman building, where prosecutors say 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz was gunning down students and staff at his former school, using an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle sneaked into the building inside a bag. According to authorities, he had arrived in an Uber about 20 minutes before school was set to end, assembled his gun in a stairwell and then methodically went from floor one to two to three. Prosecutors say he fired at anyone in his path and into classrooms through glass in the doors.
The cameras are stationary, posted near rooflines and aimed at spots around the freshman building.
