Families of those killed in the Parkland school shooting can tour the site starting today

2023-07-05 13:51

Some families of those killed in the 2018 massacre at a Parkland, Florida, high school will get a chance to visit the site where their loved ones lost their lives beginning Wednesday, the Broward County state attorney's office said.

At their request, some families and some of the surviving victims will be given private, individual tours of the inside of the 1200 building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the office said. The building was the scene of the deadliest US high school shooting, in which 17 people, including 14 students, were killed and 17 others were injured on Valentine's Day.

Gena and Tom Hoyer, the parents of slain student Luke Hoyer, plan to go on the private tour, according to their attorney David Brill.

"As Gena compellingly put it: 'It's going to be agony, but I need to go where my sweet Lukey Bear took his last breath and went to heaven. I brought him into this world and as a mom, I need to be where he left it,'" Brill said in an email to CNN.

The tours will happen at the site of a massacre that ignited a wave of student-led protests against America's scourge of school shootings -- a scourge that continues. About 200 shootings have happened at K-12 campuses since the Parkland killings, according to a CNN tally.

The tours also come after a jury last week acquitted Scot Peterson, the school resource officer who stayed outside during the attack, of felony child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury.

Prosecutors, law enforcement officers and victim advocates will conduct the tours of the crime scene, which has been preserved since the shooting, for the families who wish to see it before it is altered, the state attorney's office said.

Public access will not be allowed during the visits, which are expected to be conducted over a couple of weeks.

After the tours are completed, custody of the building will be returned to Broward County Public Schools, which will handle the "process for all of the other staff members and former students who were present on the day of the mass shooting," the state attorney's office said.