OPINION
Vol. 127, No. 96 Thursday, February 15, 2018
A&C
REPUBLICANS NEED STRONG FRONT-RUNNER
MOBY SADNESS
BEING BLACK & UNDOCUMENTED
PAGE 7
PAGE 10
PAGE 12
SPORTS
Snow sculptors compete nationally By Sarah Ehrlich @sarahehrlich96
PARKLAND, Fla. — A young woman who just walked out from the direction of the high school, who refused to give her name, gets a hug as she reaches the overpass at Coral Springs Drive and the Sawgrass Expressway just south of the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where a shooting occurred on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018 in Parkland, Fla. PHOTO COURTESY OF AMY BETH BENNETT SUN SENTINEL/TNS
17 dead in Florida school shooting By Matt Pearce, Molly Hennessy-Fiske & Jaclyn Cosgrove Los Angeles Times
PARKLAND, Fla. — A former student opened fire at a South Florida high school Wednesday, killing 17 people and wounding at least a dozen others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the city of Parkland, officials said. The suspected gunman, Nikolas Cruz, 19, was quickly arrested “without incident” in nearby Coral Springs, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. Officials think he acted alone. Cruz had been expelled from the school for “disciplinary reasons” and had made “disturbing” posts on social media before the attack, Israel said.
Cruz was armed with at least one AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and “countless magazines,” said Israel, who did not suggest a possible motive for the attack. The attack Wednesday was the eighth-deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, with seven of the 10 deadliest shootings happening since 2007. “It’s a horrific situation. It’s just a horrible day for us,” said Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie. Several students reported first hearing gunshots after someone pulled a fire alarm. Hannah Siren, 14, was in math class on the third floor of the freshman building, where at least part of the shooting reportedly happened. “The people next door to us
must have not locked their door,” Hannah told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper, breaking into tears. “They all got shot,” – seven to 10 victims, she said. Samuel Dykes, a freshman, added that he heard gunshots and saw several bodies in a classroom on the third floor. Another student told WSVNTV that when she ran into a classroom on the third floor to hide, a geography teacher opened the door to let her in, and when he started closing it, the teacher “was shot and killed right there,” she said. “The door was open, (the gunman) could have walked in at any time.” The students hid in the corner and survived. “He kind of shielded them,” one of his students, Christina
Vega, told the television station. “He actually stepped up.” Christina added: “I don’t want to go back to this school. I can’t go up the stairs. There’s blood on the stairs.” Throughout the school, students barricaded themselves inside classrooms and closets. In one classroom video that went viral on social media, students cowered beneath desks, sobbing and screaming as repeated gunshots can be heard nearby. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” a student cried out. Law enforcement personnel and ambulances swarmed to the scene. Some students evacuated by walking in a chain with their hands on the shoulders of the students in front of them. see SHOOTING on page 6 >>
Colorado gets hundreds of inches of snow every year, so it only makes sense that we use it as an art form. From Jan. 29 to Feb. 4, temperatures were frigid in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin at the 2018 U.S. National Snow Sculpting Competition. Three of the 15 snow sculpting teams were from Colorado, which was a first at the competition as there has only been one Colorado team in previous years. Colorado Team Three was determined to find a winning place at the competition with their idea entitled “Peace Within,” a sculpture featuring a tree base with a giant heart and detailed birds flying all around it. Competitors had two days to build the starting snow block and then just three days to turn it into something extraordinary. “I’ve dabbled in ice sculpting, but I like snow better; it is a very forgiving medium,” said artist and Colorado State Snow Sculpting Competition co-founder Steve Mercia. “There’s architecture involved as well. Snow is pretty heavy and if stuff isn’t freezing, you could have a problem.” It was Mercia’s fifth time at the national competition, while it was a first for his teammate Kerri Ertman. The third team member, Alex Amys, had also been before. Snow sculpting has taken Mercia to competitions all over the world to places like Italy, Japan, China and Switzerland, where he has received a couple see SNOW on page 12 >>