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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Two students told investigators they reported the Broward County high school shooting suspect to an administrator for making threats but felt they were not taken seriously, a commission investigating the massacre was told Tuesday.
RELATED: More coverage of the Parkland shooting
Pinellas County sheriff's Detective Chris Lyons told the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission that 30 people knew suspect Nikolas Cruz made threats and racist remarks, committed animal cruelty and engaged in odd behavior in the years before the February shooting that left 17 dead, but few reported it to police or school authorities.
Even when they reported the former Stoneman Douglas student, nothing happened, Lyons said.
"'See something, say something' means something, and it has to be more than a phrase," said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the commission's chairman. "It has to resonate with the public because law enforcement cannot be everywhere all the time."
The commission is using his detectives and other investigators from outside Broward County to conduct its investigation to avoid conflicts of interest."
Threats reported before Parkland massacre
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People died in the shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because the school failed to implement a simple security measure that had been recommended twice to teachers and administrators, according to testimony Wednesday at a meeting of the state commission investigating the massacre.
Security experts on two separate occasions in the past two years advised teachers and administrators to mark safe areas called “hard corners” in each classroom, said Pinellas County Sheriff’s Detective Walter Bonasoro, serving as an investigator for the commission.
These are areas located at an angle that would prevent anyone firing a gun through the classroom door from hitting anyone in them.
But just two teachers in Building 12, where the shooting took place, marked off hard corners, using tape, and these had too much furniture and other materials for all students to be able to crowd into them during the shooting.
The revelation added to the growing list of missed opportunities by the school district and law enforcement agencies for preventing — or at least mitigating — a shooting that left 17 dead and 17 wounded.
Max Schachter, whose son, Alex, was killed, asked if anyone died because of the failure to have marked, cleared hard corners.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the chairman of the commission, said, “There were some, definitely.”
One girl was killed after she was “nudged out of a hard corner and couldn’t get in,” he said.
The schools’ personnel were advised to create these safe zones in classroom corners by Al Butler, a school district security expert, and Steven Wexler, a retired
Secret Service agent."
People died in Parkland massacre because schools ignored security warning