Florida School Shooting: ‘No Words’ as 17 Die in a Barrage of Bullets<br />The massacre called to mind the country’s two mass shootings<br />that have come to be known by the name of the schools: Columbine, the high school outside Denver where 12 students and a teacher were killed in 1999; and Sandy Hook, the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., where 20 students and six adults were shot dead in 2012.<br />Mr. Gard said that after the shooting, he learned from several students<br />that Mr. Cruz was obsessed with a girl at the school to the point of “stalking her,” a point the authorities did not raise in news briefings near the scene.<br />By the end of the rampage, Mr. Cruz had killed 12 people inside the school<br />and three outside it, including someone standing on a street corner, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.<br />PARKLAND, Fla. — A heavily armed young man barged into his former high school about an hour northwest of Miami on Wednesday, opening fire on terrified students<br />and teachers and leaving a death toll of 17 that could rise even higher, the authorities said.<br />Sheriff Israel said law enforcement officials had already discovered material on Mr. Cruz’s social media accounts that was “very, very disturbing.”<br />Jim Gard, a math teacher at the school, said Mr. Cruz was in his class in 2016 and appeared to be a “quiet” student.<br />The shootings have become common enough that many schools, including Stoneman Douglas High,<br />run annual drills in which students practice huddling in classrooms behind locked doors.
