Florida students recall terror and heroism as they urge action on guns

A day after the shooting at Stoneman Douglas high school, students describe saving lives as others condemn easy access to firearms

As the Rev Tom Hendrikse addressed the hundreds of mourners at the Parkridge church, a few miles from the site of Wednesday’s school shooting massacre, he conceded there were few words to sum up the grief.

“We often find it hard, as people of faith, to respond to tragedies like this,” he told the congregation on Thursday, sitting outside in the sweltering heat in a throng that reached the edge of the courtyard.

“Words seem to fall short of describing the pain and how we feel for our community today,” he said, before leading the group of stunned families and students in a rendition of Amazing Grace.

For many present, the pastor’s words carried a painful truth. Some Stoneman Douglas high school students, wearing the school colour of maroon, were overcome with pain, as they hugged each other, wept and grieved silently.

But others attempted to summon the words to describe the ordeal they had witnessed less than 24 hours before: their individual acts of bravery, the gut-wrenching devastation of losing close friends, and their pointed demands for political action.

Darryl Verna, an 11th-grader who lost his close friend Joaquin Olivier in the shooting, described cowering in the school’s band room hearing shots ring out and frantically texting his sister, another student at the school, to make sure she had made it out.

“Once I confirmed that she was away from the building, I didn’t really care what happened to myself after that,” he told the Guardian.

Verna was a former linebacker in the school’s football team and knew Aaron Feis, an assistant coach who was killed in the attack as he jumped in front of a spray of bullets. He was “like a godfather”.

“He was too good of a person, too good of an individual, he didn’t deserve that,” said Verna, choking up as he tried to find the words.

But as he turned to the issue of politics he regained his flow.

“I feel it’s absurd how it’s so easy for someone to get access to a firearm and so easy for someone to purchase one,” he said.

“Families are being torn apart, at the end of the day. It’s not even about the politics at this point. It’s unfortunate that this many people have to send their kids off to school and then later hear they’re not coming home.”

So what would this teenager say to lawmakers in Washington, deadlocked on the issue of stricter regulation?

“I’d tell them to get their act together. They need to lead.”

Kaleb Martinez, 16, who spoke to the Guardian earlier in the day, found the words to agree.

“After what happened, I feel like everybody [at school] has the same opinion [on gun control].”

Martinez, who was also at the school at the time the shooting occurred, was another close friend of Joaquin Olivier, whom he described as “bright, smart and funny”.

“He never had anything negative going on. Whenever he’d come around it was always positive encounters, always good talk. Always fun to be around. He was a great guy.”

“From what I heard, I think he was shot in the back,” the teenager said.

Other students recalled their own acts of leadership, which may have saved dozens of lives, as the shooter rampaged through the building.

Colton Haab and his classmate Zackary Walls, both 17, had packed their belongings for dismissal and were heading out of the classroom’s rear door when the first shots rang out on Wednesday afternoon.

“As I was closing the door, I heard gunshots, seven of them,” Haab said. “The students were in the hallway, running, and I opened the door and pulled them all in, about 90 kids from the other classes, and my class as well.

“We barricaded ourselves in with Kevlar [synthetic bullet-resistant] sheets, put them in a corner and grabbed two pieces of wood, a fire extinguisher and a chair as weapons in case this guy got in.

“If he came up to the door I didn’t want him breaking the window on the door. I knew if he breaks that window he’s coming in the room, and if he comes in that room I’m going to try to stop him with everything I have or I’m going to die trying.”

Walls, like Haab a member of the school’s J-ROTC military careers programme, waited at the doorway of the corps’ training classroom in case the shooter had forced his way in. “We’re standing there with two two-by-fours ready to fight if we needed to,” he said.

Haab said he was able to calm several of the students who were having panic attacks. “They were scared, but the reason they were OK is I told them it was a drill, and it wasn’t an active shooter situation, right away; then I was able to calm everyone down,” he said.

“As soon as everyone was calm I was making sure everybody had a partner.”

With no teacher in the room, it was left to Haab, who plans to join the US Marines after he graduates, and who said he has experience of training for active shooter situations through the ROTC’s partnership with local police departments, to direct his classmates.

He said the group left in single file, with their hands on their heads, after a Swat team came into the classroom.

“As I walked on over past the cops, I saw one body down, lifeless,” he said.

Cameo Jordan, 15, described how the walls of her classroom in the school’s freshman building “sizzled” from gunshots as he tried to gain entry.

“He was on my floor to begin with. We were doing work and heard boom, boom, boom,” the 10th-grader said. “We all ran to the walls. When I got to the walls, I felt it ,and then we heard it a couple more times.”

“So we kept in, waiting, and heard the shots get closer. We heard people getting killed, and he [the shooter] kept screaming: ‘Open the door, open the door now.’ He was just screaming that.

“I felt him shooting at the walls. They were, like, sizzling, and then he kept trying to open all the doors. He got closer to our room.

“It felt like forever but two hours later the police broke down the door. We thought it was him – we’re thinking the shooter’s breaking in trying to pretend he was the police.

“We walked through so much glass. There was glass and powder everywhere, outside every single window. I saw two dead bodies and there was blood splattered everywhere. I saw one body lying outside the building.”