“Run. Hide. Fight.” concept, with the key proviso to attempt them in that order. Hide only if all escape routes are blocked; fight only as a last resort. Otherwise, run, run, run! So why did they go back inside?
“Because we didn’t know if there were other shooters around the campus and we needed to take cover—we couldn’t just run away. I know a lot of kids just ran away to the local Walmart, but like—we had to run back inside. There were gates surrounding the bus loop and the gates were really high and we could not jump them. Who knows, there could be another shooting like— When I was running inside it was so scary because I didn’t know who was behind me. It could have been a whole team of shooters. You never know. It was really scary.”
Many kids fleeing Columbine also encountered a chain-link fence, but it was only about chest high and they went right over. Teachers and other students helped kids who were having trouble. The tall fence around Douglas was considerably higher. It was erected for security—but it trapped many students inside.
Cameron Kasky was one of the kids running with Jackie. They were good friends, but in different classes, on opposite sides of campus, thrown together by a series of coincidences. Broward County schools use a block scheduling system, meaning that students meet for periods one through four on silver days, alternating with five through eight on burgundy days. Wednesday was a silver day, which ends with drama class for Cameron—and drama fun for his younger brother, Holden, who has autism. The special-needs kids get out thirty minutes early, to get to the bus loop. On silver days, Cameron excuses himself to pick up Holden and bring him back to drama class, where he has a wonderful time. But Cameron was working on a song that day and lost track of time. Around 2:25, he realized his mistake and ran out of rehearsal to retrieve Holden. That put them across campus when the fire alarm rang. Fire drills were already stressful, because there were several kids with autism, and some of them have trouble dealing with situations like that. Then all hell broke loose: the screaming, running, and frantic calls to take cover in the school. Cameron and Holden sprinted. Cameron thought he could get them back to drama class, but a teacher, Ms. Driscoll, said, “Go into that room!”
“We can make it to drama,” Cameron said.
“No, go into that room right now!”
Ms. Driscoll ushered in several of the kids with autism, and Jackie as well. Then she locked the door, shut out the lights, and they all crouched in the dark. Cameron looked for a weapon, chose a chair, moved to grab it, but the teacher said, No! Try not to make a sound.
“Look Holden, we’re going to be here for a while,” Cameron told him.
“I didn’t let go of that kid for an hour and a half. Everybody was spreading rumors,” Cameron would post on Facebook when he got home. “I heard at least three names dropped as to who the shooter was. We were all so distracted looking at our phones that we forgot somebody was shooting up our school.” Then kids started posting video. “People being shot. People bleeding. Dead bodies. All over Snapchat.” Kids were crying, texting their parents. “You could smell the anxiety. . . . We just wanted to hear that the shooter was gone. We didn’t want to be shot. We had no idea what that even entailed. We’re young. We don’t know real pain.”
That went on interminably, then someone smashed the glass out of the door. “All the glass shattered,” Jackie said. Five hulking men burst in barking orders and pointing assault weapons. “They all screamed, ‘It’s the police! Put your hands up!’” It was terrifying, Jackie said. But she was most afraid for the kids with autism. “They were making noises, and some of them didn’t know to put their hands up when they were told to. My teacher had to tell the SWAT team and the police that there were kids with autism in the room, and they might not be able to follow orders, which is scary because if they had made the wrong move, who knows what could have happened.”
2
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is an unwieldy name. The kids call it Douglas or MSD. The campus is supersized too, and not much to look at. Its 3,200 students are dispersed