Officers describe Parkland massacre
Blood, bodies, horror detail scene of shooting
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Bodies. Chaos. The smell of gunpowder and blood. A deputy wandering aimlessly, muttering to himself.
Officers who arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the minutes after a gunman killed 14 students and three staff members Feb. 14 described the confusion, fear, horror and some say cowardice they confronted in reports released Wednesday and Thursday through public records requests. Two talked of the extreme dread they felt because they had sons inside the school.
Coral Springs Detective Mindy Mazzei told investigators she was coming back from lunch when she learned of the shooting and hurried to campus, where she could hear the voice of her husband, a Broward sheriff ’s SWAT officer, coming over the radio as he moved inside the three-story freshman building where the massacre happened.
She went toward the building with other officers, passing the body of coach Aaron Feis, who had been shot trying to confront the gunman. She then walked into the building. Investigators later found 70 spent casings on the first floor, along with suspect Nikolas Cruz’s phone and a backpack containing a knife and a ski mask.
“You could still smell the gunpowder. You could definitely smell blood,” she said. us. And that was awful, ’cause I was standing near that, and it was just kinda me by myself, not a lot of people around. So I just felt like it was burning a hole through me,” Mazzei said, saying she felt guilty that she hadn’t arrived at the school faster, even knowing that was impossible.”
Sunrise Lt. Craig Cardinale and Coral Springs Detective Brett Schroy both rushed to the school when they heard the reports — their sons are both students there.
Cardinale said he ran past Broward deputies, who told him to stop because the shooter might still be in the building.
“I said, ‘That’s where my son’s at,” Cardinale said, telling them he was going in, punctuating it with an expletive.
He said he also encountered Deputy Scot Peterson, who was assigned to the school. Peterson later retired after video showed him arriving at the building during the shooting, drawing his gun but not going inside to confront the shooter.