TAMPA, FLA.—“Shot! Shot! Shot! Mom! God!”A boy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, on the phone with his mother, who’s relaying the call to a 911 dispatcher.Because, petrified and hiding and trying to make themselves very small, the kids called home, most of them, in whispered and panicked conversations. They wanted Mom. They wanted Dad. They wanted to be comforted, as if Mom and Dad could make everything OK, even when there’s an active shooter roaming the hallways.Only one from among the 10 calls to 911 that have been released, in excerpts, by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office — and kudos to them because media in Canada would have to jump through hoops to get a law enforcement agency to disclose such evidence without a court order — was from a student at the school directly to 911.That boy gasps for breath, choking on sobs.“Someone’s shooting up the school at Stoneman Douglas.”But the dispatcher can’t make out what he’s saying. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. What’s happening?”“Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is being shot up.” “Are you at the school?”The line goes ominously dead.Read more: Opinion | DiManno: Why Florida’s new gun control bill is a historic blow to the NRAImagine the horror as parents receive calls and messages from their kids and try to relay that information to authorities, the chaos and heartbreaking dread, as one parent stays on the line and another, or a friend, makes contact with 911, triangulating conversations, reading texts aloud, trying their damnedest to calm and reassure even as their own hearts are pounding and their worst fears seeming to be realized.“Be advised, we have possible, could be firecrackers, I think we got shots fired.”That alert from Scot Peterson, the school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas who didn’t go inside the school, didn’t confro ...
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