Bipartisan Congressional tour will visit Stoneman Douglas HS on same day of mass shooting reenactment
FORT LAUDERDALE -- A Congressional delegation will attend a tour next month of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School before the site is demolished.
The Aug. 4 bipartisan trip to the site where one of the worst mass shootings in modern history occurred is also expected to occur on the same day that a live reenactment of the massacre is planned.
U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat and a graduate of the school, is expected to lead his legislative colleagues on the fact-finding mission.
"I think it's a critical piece of this that they have to see what happened there," he said. "They have to see what the families went through."
Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Mimi-Dade County, is a leader of the Florida congressional delegation who, along with Moskowitz, are members of the Congressional Bipartisan School Safety and Security Caucus. He and Moskowitz are both expected to lead the tour of the school.
Gunman Nikolas Cruz is serving a life prison after being convicted of killing 17 people and wounding 17 others with an AR-15-style rifle.
A Broward County jury last month acquitted Scot Peterson, the school's on-campus deputy, of criminal charges that accused him of inaction during the shooting. He is also the defendant in a civil lawsuit, and a judge presiding over that proceeding has given the green light to a reenactment of the mass shooting that will use live ammunition.
A key issue in the lawsuit is what Peterson could hear during the shooting on Valentine's Day 2018
The building, left virtually untouched since the shooting, will be demolished once the legal action is completed, school officials said. No date has been scheduled yet for the site to be torn down, however.
The reenactment would be based on school surveillance videos of the massacre that show second-by-second the actions and locations of Peterson and Cruz during the six-minute attack in which some 140 rounds were fired.
Victims and family members have taken grim tours of the building since the criminal trials ended, with the last visit to take place Thursday, officials said