Active shooter reported at Florida high school

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AS MANY as 17 people have been killed after another mass shooting at a US high school.

Up to 50 others were injured when an assailant in a gas mask opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The shooter, identified as 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, reportedly pulled the fire alarm before gunning down students as they fled from the building. He has told police he triggered the alarm in the hope of getting a higher victim count.

Police responded to first reports around 2.30pm local time on Wednesday (6.30am Thursday AEDT).

According to police, Cruz was a former member of the U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. He was said to have been wearing a gas mask, a maroon or burgundy coloured shirt and black pants.

Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County says the suspect was previously expelled for disciplinary reasons.

Israel says the shooter had one .223 caliber, AR-15 firearm and multiple magazines, as well as smoke grenades. He was on the loose for more than an hour, before he was apprehended.

“He was outside and inside the school,” Israel said.

The sheriff said 12 victims were killed in the school, two died just outside the school, and one died on a road nearby. Two more died in the hospital.

A doctor at Broward Health North Hospital said three victims are in critical condition, three more are stable. There are 17 patients being treated across three hospitals.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is tracing his firearm, according to sources.

The shooting suspect just arrived at the Broward County Sheriff’s office. Several officers escorted the suspect, who was wearing a hospital gown, from a police car inside the facility.

Police are looking through his social media and the websites he visited. “Some of the things that have come mind are very, very disturbing,” the sheriff said.

Fox News reports that the suspect was a member of “Resistance” groups on Facebook, including “Syrian Resistance groups and fighter groups out of Iraq”.

The FBI has set up a website where people can submit any information, including photos and videos, that they might have related to the shooting.

The tragedy is the ninth deadliest shooting in US history.

CLASSMATE: ‘I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE HIM’

“A lot of people were saying it was going to be him,” he said. “A lot of kids threw jokes around saying that he was going to be the one to shoot up the school. It turns out that everyone predicted it. That’s crazy.”

“He was going class to class just shooting at random kids. Everything he posts (on social media) is about weapons. It’s sick.”

“It was really bad,” Walker said. “There were bullet holes everywhere. Everyone was freaking out. I did not see the shooter, but he did shoot through my class. He couldn’t get inside because the door was locked.”

“Then I heard more and more shots, and I heard banging next door,” he said. “My first instinct was to text my mom and dad and tell them that I loved them in case I was killed. Then I called 911. I just said there’s an active shooter at Stoneman Douglas and hung up because I heard footsteps coming back toward our classroom.”

CBS reported that students initially thought the shooting was a fire drill, after they had one earlier in the day.

“We thought it was a drill,” a student told CBS News. “We already had one earlier this morning ... and then we heard gunshots, some students thought it was not that serious.”

WITNESSES REVEAL THEIR TERROR

Police from neighbouring Coral Springs had advised teachers and students in the building to “remain barricaded inside until police reach you”.

School student Michael Katx told ABC News that he hid after he heard the gunfire. He said first he “heard what sounded like a garbage truck like banging”.

“Then also I hear, ‘Boom, boom, boom.’ I hear screaming everywhere,” he said. “I just got underneath my teacher’s desk.”

An ABC News reporter asked a witness how many shots he heard. He said: “Too many to count.”

Student Geovanni Vilsant told the Miami Herald that he saw three bloody bodies on the floor as he was fleeing the school.

“There was blood everywhere,” he said. “They weren’t moving.”

Len Murray’s 17-year-old son, a student at the school, sent his parents a chilling text: “Mom and Dad, there have been shots fired on campus at school. There are police sirens outside. I’m in the auditorium and the doors are locked.”

Those words came at 2:30pm on Wednesday. A few minutes later, he texted again: “I’m fine.” Murray raced to the school only to be stopped by authorities under a highway overpass within view of the school buildings in Parkland.

NBC reported that students hid in closets and under desks after teachers told them not to leave the building.

No information was immediately given to parents, Len Murray said.

“I’m scared for the other parents here. You can see the concern in everybody’s faces. Everybody is asking, ‘Have you heard from your child yet?”’

Father Caesar Figueroa told CBS that his daughter and friend were trapped in a closet.

“She is afraid to talk out loud. It’s like a war zone here with cops, machine guns, helicopters. The FBI is here, everyone is here. I told my daughter not to call me because I don’t want anyone to hear her voice.”

One daughter told her mother to “be safe” and “stay away” from the school, reported ABC News.

But her mother refused to listen, saying, “I won’t stay away. I’m your mother.”

Another parent, Joel Leffler, had two kids at the school and said they were both safe.

He said his daughter was in shock after seeing “multiple dead bodies”, and that his son called him as he escaped the school.

Students were lined up in single file as they were evacuated.

“My son heard around eight gun shots as he was running out,” Mr Leffler told NBC News.

Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky told NBC Miami that many of the students had made contact with their parents.

“It’s sad. It’s sad that these tragedies happen in our country,” she said. “Many of the students have been in touch with their parents. We have many, many parents out here.”

Parkland, about 48 kilometres north of Fort Lauderdale, is part of the relatively wealthy strip of enclaves on Florida’s east coast stretching between Miami and Palm Beach. It was voted Florida’s safest city last year.

The local paper, the Sun-Sentinel, reported that there are over 3200 students enrolled in grades 9 through to 12 at the school.

‘SOCIETY FAILED THOSE PEOPLE TODAY’

A teacher who locked herself along with 19 students into a closet during the shooting said something needs to be done about school shootings.

“It’s totally unacceptable ... society failed those people today.”

Senator Chris Murphy, who led a 15-hour filibuster on gun control last year, echoed the same message, saying “This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America. This epidemic of mass slaughter. The scourge of school shooting after school shooting.”

“It only happens here ... because a consequence of our inaction. We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”

“As a parent it scares me to death that this body doesn’t take seriously the safety of my children, and it seems like a lot of parents in south Florida are going to be asking that same question today.”

A former FBI agent has broken down in tears on TV when talking about the school shooting. “I have 10 nieces and nephews. We are talking about bump stocks, we’re talking about legislation. A child of God is dead. Can not we aknowledge in this country that we cannot accept this?” he said he broke down, unable to continue speaking.

WHITE HOUSE OFFERS THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

The White House has responded to the news, with spokeswoman Lindsay Walters saying, “We are monitoring the situation. Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected”.

US President Donald Trump tweeted shortly after being briefed.

In a second tweet President Trump said they are “working closely with law enforcement on the terrible Florida school shooting”.

US Senator for Florida Marco Rubio also tweeted, saying, “Just spoke to Broward School Superintendent. Today is that terrible day you pray never comes.”

US Senator Bill Nelson told Fox News there were “many deaths” in the shooting.

“This is a really bad day,” he said.

HORROR YEAR FOR HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

It has already been a horror year for shootings in high schools in the United States.

A 15-year-old female student in Texas was shot in her high school cafeteria in a town south of Dallas in late January, and just one day later two students were killed and more than a dozen injured when a 15-year-old boy opened fire on his classmates at his school in Kentucky.

Earlier this month, a 12-year-old girl was arrested after she allegedly shot four students inside a classroom in Los Angeles.