Unprepared and Overwhelmed

A gunman with an AR-15 fired the bullets, but a series of blunders, bad policies, sketchy training and poor leadership helped him succeed.

I chose the Pulitzer Price article of South Florida Sun Sentinel: Unprepared and Overwhelmed because school shootings are frequent tragedies presenting itself as common within the United States.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reveals there was 58 minutes of chaos on the Parkland campus marked by no one taking charge.

When the gunman entered the building, the campus watchman named Medina, one of three school employees, failed at a chance to stop blood from being shed.

After failures of code red, a voice recording of the first 911 call was presented.

Gunshots were heard in the background.

Deputy Peterson and another campus monitor met Medina, got into his golf cart, and drove toward Building 12.

Sadly, the athletic director got shot twice and was killed in the process. Students on the third floor are initially unaware there's a shooter in the building and are crowding the hallways because of the fire alarm.

20 people remain stranded in the middle of the hallway.

He fired multiple rounds into the crowd of stranded people. The Parkland assault, which would span 5 minutes and 32 seconds from first shot to last, was half over when someone finally declares a Code Red.

Campus monitor Elliott Bonner calls the alert after driving his golf cart to the southwest corner of Building 12, where he sees a body and hears gunshots.

The last five gunshots can be heard through the body cam of Deputy Josh Stambaugh.

After parking at Holmberg Road, near the scene of the shooting, he retrieved his bulletproof vest from the trunk, put it on and took cover behind his car.

After five minutes there, he hurried into his car and drove to the other end of the campus to take a position on the Sawgrass Expressway overlooking the school.

The final shot Cruz fires came from inside the teachers’ lounge.

At that time, the parkland gunman escaped while the cops had no idea. Cruz took off his rifle vest, dropped his AR-15 in a stairwell, headed down the stairs, darted out of the building and ran across campus — all while police thought he's still inside.

This article is very well thought-out and highly detailed as the crucial information is mapped out by the scene of events of the shooting in chronological order, starting from the gunman to even voice recordings of students calling 911 for help, recordings from the police scanner, and even images were shown though the Parkland security cameras.

However, this article can be too detailed for the people and loved ones who were affected in this tragedy in some way.

Sometimes it’s best to leave out the details of the Parkland shooting, as it can be too much to bare knowing how they died or even when they died.

Not only that, but there are many other press related articles that was published prior to the shooting.

The media can become emotionless at times and take a toll on the people affected. So, publishing to the media should be more aware of what they post.

Although this article can be a little too detailed, I believe it can help produce a better plan to prevent or put a stop to an unprepared school shooting.

It was obvious the policies in place weren’t working as many problems occurred: 58 minutes of chaos, three school employees failed to call for a code red, students on the third floor were initially unaware there's a shooter in the building, 20 students were shot at in the hallways because policies failed, and the list continues.

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