Melissa Falkowski hid 19 students in her classroom closet after the shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reportedly first tricked them out into the hallway by sounding a fire alarm. Her quick thinking was credited with saving their lives while 17 students and faculty members were killed.
Falkowski, a language arts teacher, realized the ruse after leading the students into the corridor where 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, the suspected shooter, was waiting to open fire as the classrooms emptied, the New York Daily News reported, and she quickly got them back into the classroom.
“We sort of huddled in the corner for a few minutes and then I made the decision to move everyone to the closet,” Falkowski told CNN.
For 30 minutes, Falkowski and students stood there, waiting in fear, until a SWAT team came and cleared the classroom.
“You try to do the best you can for the kids you are supposed to keep safe.” She said.
Falkowski said society had a responsibility to prevent such tragedies from unfolding, and that its inability to do so was unacceptable.
“We’ve trained the kids what to do, and the frustration is that we did everything that we were supposed to do … and still have to have so many casualties … it’s very emotional,” she said, per the New York Daily News.
While they were hiding the closet, Cruz apparently slipped out of the school among fleeing students. The former student there was later apprehended, after being identified as the suspected shooter, USA Today reported.
Brandon Minoff, a senior at the school who said he knew Cruz, told NBC News he wasn’t surprised Cruz had been charged in the violent attack.
“I got paired with him for a project, and he started talking to me about his life — how he was held back twice, expelled from two private schools. He likes to do reckless stuff,” Minoff said, per NBC.
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