The families of the victims gunned down in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have tentatively reached a $127.5 million settlement with the federal government. The families sued the FBI over a failure to respond to a threat that a gunman was planning an attack on the school.
Miami attorney Stuart Grossman, whose law firm represented five of the Parkland high school families in the litigation, confirmed the settlement amount to The Miami Herald.
According to The Washington Post, the U.S. Justice Department filed a notice in federal court Monday announcing that all parties are “working to finalize additional details before submission for final approval by the appropriate Department of Justice official.”
Kristina Infante of the law firm Podhurst Orseck, who was lead counsel for the 40 Parkland families suing the Department of Justice, said in a statement:
The Parkland settlement comes just a month after the Department of Justice agreed to pay $88 million to the families of those killed in a 2015 shooting at a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. It was another case in which the FBI did not do its due diligence or conduct a thorough gun-purchase background check on the white supremacist gunman in that case, Dylann Roof.
Florida gunman Nikolas Cruz, now 23, pleaded guilty last month to 17 counts of first-degree murder in the Parkland massacre. A jury trial is scheduled in January to determine whether he should face the death penalty or life in prison.
Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow died in the Parkland shooting, told the Herald that unlike the FBI, which stepped up and acknowledged its inaction, the Broward County school district and sheriff’s office, the school security staff, and the psychologists who treated the shooter had failed.
The FBI had numerous opportunities to stop Cruz.
In the months leading up to the shooting, multiple calls were made to the sheriff’s office in Broward County, alerting authorities that Cruz, who’d been expelled from the school in 2017 and had a long history of mental health issues, had purchased guns and planned to “slip into a school and start shooting the place up.”
One such tip came from a woman alerting authorities about Cruz’s troubled family life, that his mother had died recently, and of his disturbing social media posts that included pictures of mutilated animals.
“I do believe something’s going to happen,” said the woman, who identified herself as a family friend, according to The New York Times.
But the FBI never forwarded that information to the local South Florida office and no one ever reached out to Cruz.
The Post additionally reports that a person close to Cruz told the FBI about then-19-year-old Cruz’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.”
Fred Guttenberg told the Times that he was picking out a casket for his 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, two days after the shooting when he received a call from an FBI agent working with the families. The agent told Guttenberg about their mistake.
“Are you telling me that if the F.B.I. did not make a mistake and did their job a month sooner, my daughter would still be alive today?” Guttenberg asked the agent.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” the agent replied, according to Guttenberg.
A few months later, Guttenberg and his wife, Jennifer Guttenberg, sued the FBI for negligence and were eventually joined by 39 other families. The families contended that the shooting was “completely preventable.”
Victims’ families reached a $25 million settlement with the Broward County school district last month.
Miami attorney Stuart Grossman, whose law firm represented five of the Parkland high school families in the litigation, confirmed the settlement amount to The Miami Herald.
According to The Washington Post, the U.S. Justice Department filed a notice in federal court Monday announcing that all parties are “working to finalize additional details before submission for final approval by the appropriate Department of Justice official.”
Kristina Infante of the law firm Podhurst Orseck, who was lead counsel for the 40 Parkland families suing the Department of Justice, said in a statement:
The Parkland settlement comes just a month after the Department of Justice agreed to pay $88 million to the families of those killed in a 2015 shooting at a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. It was another case in which the FBI did not do its due diligence or conduct a thorough gun-purchase background check on the white supremacist gunman in that case, Dylann Roof.
Florida gunman Nikolas Cruz, now 23, pleaded guilty last month to 17 counts of first-degree murder in the Parkland massacre. A jury trial is scheduled in January to determine whether he should face the death penalty or life in prison.
Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow died in the Parkland shooting, told the Herald that unlike the FBI, which stepped up and acknowledged its inaction, the Broward County school district and sheriff’s office, the school security staff, and the psychologists who treated the shooter had failed.
The FBI had numerous opportunities to stop Cruz.
In the months leading up to the shooting, multiple calls were made to the sheriff’s office in Broward County, alerting authorities that Cruz, who’d been expelled from the school in 2017 and had a long history of mental health issues, had purchased guns and planned to “slip into a school and start shooting the place up.”
One such tip came from a woman alerting authorities about Cruz’s troubled family life, that his mother had died recently, and of his disturbing social media posts that included pictures of mutilated animals.
“I do believe something’s going to happen,” said the woman, who identified herself as a family friend, according to The New York Times.
But the FBI never forwarded that information to the local South Florida office and no one ever reached out to Cruz.
The Post additionally reports that a person close to Cruz told the FBI about then-19-year-old Cruz’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.”
Fred Guttenberg told the Times that he was picking out a casket for his 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, two days after the shooting when he received a call from an FBI agent working with the families. The agent told Guttenberg about their mistake.
“Are you telling me that if the F.B.I. did not make a mistake and did their job a month sooner, my daughter would still be alive today?” Guttenberg asked the agent.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” the agent replied, according to Guttenberg.
A few months later, Guttenberg and his wife, Jennifer Guttenberg, sued the FBI for negligence and were eventually joined by 39 other families. The families contended that the shooting was “completely preventable.”
Victims’ families reached a $25 million settlement with the Broward County school district last month.