Demolition has begun on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School building in Parkland, Fla., where the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history occurred in 2018.
Fourteen students and three staff members from the school were killed in the shooting, which took place on Valentine’s Day. The building was preserved since the day of the shooting as evidence for the gunman’s trial.
The school said demolition of the three-story building will take several weeks. The process was set to begin Thursday, but it was delayed due to weather. It is scheduled to complete before students return for classes in August.
“Whenever I would walk past it, it was just kind of eerie,” student Aisha Hashmi told The Associated Press. She graduated this month and was in sixth grade at the time of the shooting, though her older siblings were on campus.
Hashmi said it was “heartbreaking” to see glimpses of the abandoned structure behind fences on campus.
Families of victims were invited to observe the demolition Friday. Media was not allowed on campus.
“I want the building gone,” Broward County School Board Chair Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa died in the shooting, told the AP. “It’s one more step in the healing process for me and my family. My son still goes to school there, and he has to walk past that building where his sister died.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who represents Parkland and is a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, welcomed the demolition in a statement Friday.
“Our community was forever changed by the tragedy that occurred here on February 14, 2018. I never thought I’d see the high school where I graduated from turned into a war zone,” he said. “What I’ve seen in that building is truly haunting – windows with bullet holes, homework scattered everywhere, blood in the hallway. The people of Parkland will no longer have to pass by this horrific reminder of our grief. The families of those innocent lives taken that day will never be able to move on, just move forward.”
Those who have toured the building have described it as a time capsule, with bullet holes still visible in the walls.
The school board has not announced future plans for the site. Some have proposed a new field, while others have asked for a memorial to those who died in the shooting.
The gunman was sentenced in 2022 to life in prison without parole.
Updated at 1:20 p.m. EDT