Fourteen students and three staff had lost their lives in this killing on February 14, 2018, in Parkland, Florida. The state was for negligence in what is one of the worst killings in the history of the country.
Le Monde with AFP
The US Department of Justice announced, Wednesday, March 16, that it would pay $ 127.5 million (€ 115 million) to victims of the February 14, 2018 shooting in a Parkland High School, in Florida, as part of an agreement that resolves 40 complaints related to the supposed deficiencies of the federal police before the tragedy. However, this agreement “is not a recognition of guilt of the United States,” the department announced in a statement, without giving more details.
On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz, 19, had opened fire with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle in the Marjory-Stoneman-Douglas High School in Parkland, of which he had been excluded in the previous year. He had made seventeen deaths (fourteen students and three high school staff) and about fifteen wounded, in what was one of the worst massacres committed in schools in the United States. In October, he pleaded guilty and a jury will have to determine his sentence at the end of a trial in April. Prosecutors intend to request the death penalty.
In parallel with the criminal record, several families of victims and survivors had complained to civil against the United States, accusing the FBI of not having followed two “pipes” informing him of the dangerousness of the young man. Forty days before the tragedy, a woman knowing him had called the federal police to say that he was ready to “explode”. He “will slip into a school and start shooting,” she feared.
“The FBI had done nothing” of this information, according to their complaint. “Because of his negligence, Cruz has been able to kill seventeen students and professors,” added the complainants in their request for damages and interests.
Psychiatric history
Five months before the facts, the owner of a YouTube channel had also reported a comment left under one of his videos in which a user named “Nikola Cruz” had claimed that he would become “a professional sniper” . FBI agents had interviewed the owner of the chain without establishing a link with Mr. Cruz. Despite heavy psychiatric history, the young man had also been able to legally buy an assault rifle.
The drama of Parkland had aroused immense emotion in all the United States, and a historic mobilization had been led by several young survivors and the relatives of victims. She culminated on March 24, 2018 when the “march for our lives” had gathered 1.5 million people across the country, the largest national event for a better firearms supervision of the history of the United States , causing some of the possibility of legislative evolution.
On the other hand, and the sales of firearms have increased in recent years in the United States, especially during the Pandemic of Covid-19.
Mass killings remain a scourge in the country, but the blockages at the conference, under the influence of the weapons lobby, make it unlikely any major progress on the subject.