The Parkland School Shooting Anthology

0:00 [MUSIC] Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims. Whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? [MUSIC] I use my experiences in law enforcement, corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts. Some so evil, many feel they are, unspeakable. [MUSIC] Warning, unspeakable is intended for mature audiences.

0:54 If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listing discretion is advised. Hey y'all Kelly Jennings, here what is up? Are you all ready? Are you ready for what I promised you because today's episode, y'all have been taking notes. I've been kicking ass and taking names and taking notes because this shooter, this murderer of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Kids has got me freaking pissed. I'm just gonna start. I'm just gonna start right here. Why that little bitch wearing a mask the whole time that he's up in the courtroom? Can we just start there? Pull your damn mask down. Cova is the last of your worry son. That dude wore a freaking medical mask up in the middle of that courtroom, like he needed to protect himself from COVID.

1:34 He's scared of COVID, is that what this really is? No, you're a freaking coward. That's what that's about. When those people stood up to talk about their children that you murdered, you hid behind a mask. So you're a coward from jump street. Let's just start with that. You are a freaking coward. Now, I do want to say this. How about that judge that was sitting on the bench on that case? Everybody has their own opinion. I know opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one. Well, I do too because I thought she was a freaking boss. I liked her. I felt like people disrespected her in her own courtroom, which was pretty crappy, but overall, I liked the way that she ran her show.

2:16 Let's just jump right into this. How about the fact that the case to defend that piece of crap cost the taxpayers of Florida over $2 million. That was just his security, the security, to protect a kid or a man that would walk into a school and slaughter innocent children at Marjorie Stoeman-Dungless High School. We, as taxpayers, spent over $2 million on his security. I got a problem with that. I would rather as a taxpayer, which I'm not in Florida. Okay, I understand that.

2:57 I'm in Louisiana, but I would rather my taxes go to pay for the funerals of the victims. Or how about this? Let's not have victims. How about we walk into a school and we reinforce them with $2 million? There's a lot we could have done. But we're going to pay to have that prick protected. Give me a break. Sorry, I'm coming in hot from the start, but that just blew my mind. Millions more will be paid out to his defense team, who I didn't like either. And it's not by proxy. I didn't not like them because they were defending him. You have a constitutional right to be defended in court. Thank God you have that right because now we know that he wasn't unjustly sentenced to prison for the rest of his life.

3:40 He got a defense. It was crap, but he got one. But they're going to make millions of dollars off of this little piece of crap, dude. Who went in and murdered children and the taxpayers are going to eat that money. If that does not piss you off, I don't know if you are paying attention. That's insanity. And you wonder why you wonder why our country is in the state that it's in today. But today I do want to focus on the victims. I want to talk about some of these people that stood up in that courtroom and looked at pumpkin his eyes. And y'all they said things that I just wanted to walk up and hug them and high five on them because they I thought these were some of the strongest family members.

4:25 And they did their kids such service when they got up to talk about them. They brought pictures, right? They held up pictures of their kids so you can see that this is not just a headline. This is their child. This is a human being. And they mattered. And we're going to spend two million dollars just on this guy right here is security. Do we have help? Is it hello? Hello? Is anybody listening to me? If that is insane. So one of the dads, okay. His name was Max Shactor. Max Shactor. He was the face of this trial to me.

5:06 I don't know if you followed it, but I did. And I was very in tune with these families. Very in line with my God that, you know, their children's murder is being put on display. And I don't think the media had good intentions. I think that it was a thrilling story that just got people's attention and so they got ratings for it. But his son, his name was Alex Shactor. And Mr. Max, Mr. Max Shactor, if you happen to know somebody who listens to this podcast, I want you to know that you are the man that your face and the way that you carried yourself in that courtroom, I was rooting you on personally and I have never met you a day in my life.

5:48 But if there is ever a parent who did service, a service for their child, it was you, sir. I saw your facial expressions. I saw the disgust in your face when that defense team acted like a bunch of animals, which I'll talk about in a minute. Almost like this was a game of some sort. But you were the face, Mr. Shactor, of victims to me. And I felt like you knocked it out of the park when you got up there. So first of all, like I said, his face, he just looked disgusted the entire time. And I felt that with him, that we would even as Americans, even entertain the fact that this kid, this dude walks in there and murders all these people and we're going to feel sorry for him.

6:35 There's no reason I can ever think of that would even be plausible to explain why someone would behave in such a way, right? And something that a lot of people like to bring up, like God bless my brother, my brother, I love him, but my brother is the polar opposite of me, politically and in any other way. But I love him. So if you're listening, I love you brother. I'm not going to say your name, but I love you. But there's people out there that look at these people that go and do these things and they feel almost sorry for them, like they had a bad childhood. Hell, we all had a bad childhood. Are you kidding me? My parents got divorced when I was a kid.

7:21 Oh my god, look how wounded I am. Look at me fucking cry. Oh my god. Something that was brought up a lot in their victim impact statements. And if you don't know about a victim impact statement, let me start there. So these are done post-conviction, so after conviction, but before syncing, right? Because they're not supposed to affect the outcome of whether someone is guilty or not. It's just that the victims get their time to stand up and say, how dare you? You have affected my life in the following ways. And because of this, you should get, you know, X, Y and Z. Well, this guy, this Nicholas Cruz, punk, should have got a bullet in his head, as soon as he was found guilty because he is not worth the air it takes to fill his lungs in my humble opinion. There was a whole lot brought up about mental health services in the trial. There is a link there. Remember we talked about in the past episodes about Columbine and how the shooters in Columbine, their mother or Dylan's mother felt like his case was really more of a mental health issue than it was being evil. That's up for you to decide. I think they're actually evil. I think maybe he did have some mental health problems, but none of it met the muster of why you would just go shoot people and murder innocent people. The defense team tried to argue that Nicholas Cruz, quote unquote, fell through the cracks. He fell through the cracks. Well, that kind of ticked me off.

8:50 And let me tell you why as a teacher, that ticked me off from personal experience. The world today is not what it used to be, but kids come to school and there's nobody that spends more time with the kid during the day than a teacher. Nobody, they spend more of their waking hours with their teachers than most kids do with their parents because their parents are at work, right? God bless us all going to work. Same for my kids. I'm a teacher, but my kids are with another teacher, right? We know the behaviors. We look at these kids. We know when there is a problem and there's probably not a lot of teachers like me with a big mouth who would stand up and say that kid right there's got a problem, a huge problem. And you want to know why? Because lawsuits rule the world. God forbid, you tell somebody, hey, little Ray Ray's got a little mental, mental issue. You look like the bad guy.

9:45 You look like you're picking on a kid when there's not a teacher worth their salt in America today that doesn't look at these kids and love them with every ounce of their being, but we know when there is a problem. We see it. Do you see it? Would you be willing to listen to someone who says, look, I see this happening because in my experience, I'd say 25% of the time that there were serious problems, 25% of the time parents did not really want to hear it. It was me. It was me. I was the problem. And that, real quick, side note, that means 75% of my math is correct. Did exactly what good parenting should be. And so kudos to those parents. But there's not a lot of issues like this, but the ones that matter like this guy right here, his defense study fell through the cracks. Well, let's talk about that for a minute. First of all, he started seeing a psychologist when he was eight years old, eight. And guess he brought that up to their attention, a teacher. He had weekly counseling from the age of eight years old. He had mental health counseling from the school. Since he was eight years old in 2011, y'all, he had therapy and counseling. The school suggested that this should happen.

11:12 He was on multiple medications, multiple. I don't know what the hell a red flag looks like, apparently, but this is what I assume it looks like. Multiple medications. And since eight years old, you need to see a psychologist for wackado behavior. I don't know. All brought up by a school. Y'all between 2013 and 2014, one year, there were 27 home visits because of this kid. 27. If there was one home visit to my house, as soon as that door shut, me and my kid are going to have a discussion and it ain't going to be nice. And if I need to put you in a mental facility, then pack your bag, honey, get you some clean draws and some slippers so your feet don't get dirty because you rolling on into mental health services because you're not going to be the next freaking school shooter. But this kid got 27 home visits. They had over 700 pages of therapy documentation for this guy. 700. And then I couldn't tell you the hundreds of hours as they discussed hundreds of hours of therapy. His ninth, tenth, his ninth and tenth year, great. He got more therapy from the school.

12:36 And look, I didn't see the receipts, but I'm going to air on the side of it probably was not his pocket that was paying for it. So how dare this defense team, how dare they say that he fell through the cracks, he didn't fall through the cracks, he created the damn crack. And but because nobody wants to be the quote unquote bad guy, nobody wants to stand up and say this kid here has severe mental problems severely unhinged since he was eight. He was able to go and murder 17 other kids. That's unacceptable. I don't mean to be preaching to the choir here. If you're listening to this, I'm sure you understand that, but we as a people, we as a people of a duty that when somebody or multiple somebody's and 700 pages worth of therapists are saying there's something wrong with somebody, we cannot act like this is just a tragedy that was unexplainable. No, it's not. It was addressed for years, for years. It's ridiculous. Everybody agreed he needed help. Well, over 20 sessions, we're documented that said that somebody said this dude is not right. Now is not right, does that mean evil? I'm going to air on the side of yes. I don't think this is a very nice person.

14:05 Okay. But to say that mental health services were not provided or were needed and he fell through the cracks, it's just not true. And this is something that, you know, we as a people listening to my podcast, maybe there's one of you out there and to the one who's listening is probably my husband, hey, listen to what I'm saying. But to anyone listen to this, if we don't get together and get a freaking grip in this country and say our kids who are doing the right thing, who are following the rules, who are making good grades, who are in the band or cheerleaders and play in football, or the little guy behind the computer building the video games or the robot crew, right? Those kids that are doing the right things have every right to be protected from these animals that you cannot say fell through the cracks. Shut up. That defense team can get somewhere with that BS.

15:00 Now that said, I got a kick out of this. I don't know if you've been listening to my first couple episodes, but I brought up the killer's mother in the first episode, right? Dylan Cleebold's mom. And I talked about even for briefly, Dahmer's mom, right? And we talked about the moms and how society is quick to blame those mothers. Well, I may need to pat myself on the back because guess what was brought up at the trial by Mr. Shactor himself, the father of victim Alex Shactor, the killer's mom. Listen, what he had to say, I even took notes on it like a dork. I literally took notes in my classroom while I was giving a test. I was doing my job, but while giving a test, I was listening to the victim and back statement. This dad brought up the killer's mom. He looked him dead in the eye. There was ugly glasses. He looked him dead in the eye. And he said, you know, let me tell you something about your mother. And I was like, like, he's going to the core. He's going to the core, but you know what, you killed a son. Good. And he said, I was very angry with your mother at the start of this trial. I was extremely angry. And look, if body language could say anything, y'all, Nicholas Cruz's face shot up and he looked at Mr. Shactor when he said it. That dad got this killer's attention when he started talking about his mama. And he said, I was so angry with your mother. And he said, guess what? It's

16:37 kind of comical that the anniversary of her death is on the day I'm speaking right now. Your mom died while I'm sitting here talking to you, punk. This is the day she was sunk underground. And I'm so angry at her this whole trial. But guess what? This shows the humanity of Mr. Shactor in my opinion, and that he's a good man. And then I'm certain he raised a great son, Alex Shactor. There's no doubt in my mind because he said, but you know what? I am going to defend your mother right now. And my jaw dropped like, and you can't see me. Well, maybe you can if you're watching it, but I got goosebumps.

17:18 All right, because that's how real this was. He said, I am going to defend your mother. And he went through the list and said, I was so angry at your mom to have raised who could have raised such a psychopath, a sick psychopath. But guess what, buddy? You failed your mother, your mother dearest that you like to blame, right? That you're just so traumatized by her death. You're so upset by her death. Your mother dealt with a monster. You are a monster. I feel bad for your mother. My heart aches for your mother because she did everything she could for you from the age of three to 18 years old.

18:02 That's his direct quote. She did everything for you from the age of three to 18 years old. And you know what, buddy? She never gave up on you. Not one time. He said, I have sat here day after day, and listened to all of the therapy that your mother sent you to. All the hours she sent trying to get you help the days, the years, the months that she invested in you trying to get you to behave to act right. And if your nuts get you medication, I'm adlibbing there. Your mother did everything within her power before she passed away to fix you. And she did not succeed because you are evil. And I loved it. I felt like he nailed it on the head. That mama were so quick to blame, and God let her rest in peace. But that mama did everything she could for her psychotic monster of a son and he didn't want to hear it. And then he wants to turn around and say she's the cause of his evil. No, punk. You're an idiot. You're a jerk. And you're not likeable. But hey, the joke's on you because guess what? When I was in prison, I went in prison. You ready? I worked in prison, right? I worked at Angola. I was looking at this guy. Well, side note. I was looking at this fella while he's sitting there behind his defense team of seven people. And I'm thinking, you know, if I freaking run a traffic light, I'm not going to get anybody to care about me. You murder 17 people. And we've got these want to be, you know, save the world vigilante. He's acting like you're worth something. But I was looking

19:33 at him and he fits every single notch on the rape target list. Now, I don't want to make rape funny. It's not. But if ever, if ever, there were some type of vigilante justice that would go down on this boy, he's about to find out. So when I was working in the prison, five foot seven or shorter, under 160 pounds, white from urban areas, non, well, he doesn't fit this one nonviolent offender. Obviously, he's a violent offender. But podna, you better hope they put you in solitary.

20:16 I'm telling you now, because, uh, Nicholas, you about to be Nicholas. Okay. They're about to handle you, son. But Mr. Shactor, I thought did so wonderful. Saying you failed you, podna. Nobody here failed you. The system, quote unquote, didn't fail you. That's a cop out. We are the system. The system gave you years and years of therapy. The schools recognized that you were nut. Your mother saw that you were crazy and not crazy in a poor fellow. He's got a problem in an evil way. You were evil. You were mean. You are diabolical. And only a mother's love would have stood that test. And until the day she died, she tried to help you and you wouldn't, you wouldn't accept it. You didn't want it. So the jokes on you, because another fun fact, if you will, the day that he was that, uh, Nicholas Cruz was sentenced was also Mr. Shactor's birthday.

21:18 And he said, so I'll leave you with this. This is the day that you disappear. You don't matter anymore. For all intents and purposes, you're about to be wiped off the mat, buddy. No one cares about you. Your mother's dead. Your piece of shit, those, my words, not his. Your life is meaningless. Your purpose list. You're about to go to prison for the rest of your life. And I will celebrate every single, I will celebrate this day from this day forward on my birthday knowing that you were no more.

22:03 I hope you enjoy it. I hope you have a good time, right? But he also said something else. I really took two and he turned and talked to the jury directly and told them that they got it dead wrong. And that he will now work to make absolute changes in the criminal justice system in terms of jurors and needing a unanimous decision. So Florida recently, or Florida's law is that they have to have a unanimous decision for him to have gotten the death penalty, which means one juror thwarts an entire jury. Everyone on that jury could have said, let's, yeah, the death penalty.

22:43 One person thwarted that. Y'all, no matter what we do, people are going to have these, their beliefs, right? I have my beliefs. I try to be educated. I try to, you know, we're actually election time. I actually go research what I'm going to be voting on because I think that my vote, my opinion is that if you're not going to vote, then shut up. You don't get an opinion. If all you're going to do is complain, get out of my way. I have things to do. Well, same thing here. If, when we get a jury and it, it has to be unanimous and one person decides they're just against the death penalty and no matter what, they're not going to vote for it. No, even if the law says they fit the bill, even if, if Nicholas Cruz does not fit the bill of needs to be executed, nobody on the planet does. The defense stood up at one point and said, the death penalty is for the worst of the worst. Please tell me what's worse because what I saw was a 14 year old boy, Mr.

23:43 Shactor's son, right? Little Alex, 14 years old, in his little band uniform at school in his English class, the picture he was in his band uniform, but he was in his English class, right in essay and he gets a bullet to him and it, and kills him and he's done nothing. He probably didn't even know Nicholas Cruz and then Nicholas Cruz continued and I hate saying his name. He didn't deserve it. He's a friggin murderer and that's something I loved about the dad too is that he did not call him by his name. He called him by his prisoner number. I didn't write it down. I probably should have, but let's just say he was, you know, his number is one, two, three, four. He would say and you prisoner number one, two, three, four, failed your mother and I was like, oh, it's burn, right? Getting. Seems childish, but I liked it, right? It really solidified the fact that you're nothing.

24:32 You're nothing. You're a ward of the state, sir. You're no, but you will be told when to eat, when to sleep. But on that note, one juror can thwart an entire jury and he avoided the death penalty and then the defense wants to say that should be safe for the worst of the worst. There's nothing worse than a coward who will plan. He put on his fatigues as ROTC fatigues or whatever you want to call him. He walked on to campus. He planned. He got the weapons. He went and he murdered people. He went up and down the halls. Some kids he went back and shot him again. What is worse than pre-meditated, evil, murder of multiple people? He even made a video if you haven't been following this. He made a video. Matter of fact, we're going to find that video and we're going to pop it in here real quick, the audio of it. Listen to him in his own words. Today is the day. The day that it all begins, the day of my massacre shall begin. All the kids in school have been fear and hide. From the wrath of my power they will know who I am. I am nothing. I am no one. My life is nothing and meaningless.

25:43 Everything that I hold dear I let go beyond your half. Every day I see the world ending another day. I live a long life, live in seclusion and solitude. I hate everyone and everything. With the power of my AR you will all know who I am. I had enough of being told what to do and when to do. I had enough of being telling me that I'm an idiot and a dumbass. In real life you're all the dumbass. You're all stupid and brainwashed by these fucking political government programs. You will all see you will all know who my name is. I love for you Angie will never go away. I hope to see you in the afterlife. On one day another you will end and will all die. Hello. My name is Nick and I'm going to be in next school sugar of 2018. My goal is at least 20 people with an AR 15 and a couple of trace rounds. I think I can do a good done. Location is Sturm Douglas and Parkland Florida. It's going to be a big event.

27:06 And when you see me on the news, you'll all know who I am. You're all going to die. Can't wait. Here's a plan. I'm going to go take Uber in the afternoon before 240. I'm there. I'll go into my school campus, walk up the stairs, load my bags and get my AR and shoot people down at the main was it the main courtyard? Wait and people will die. So how do you like that? How do you like what he just said in it from from his own mouth, right? From his own mouth, he's talking about it like as a baseball game and these kids are asleep or are at home on in their own business, doing their homework, hanging out with their family for the last days of their lives and have no clue. It's evil.

28:10 You're right. It should be for the worst of the worst. And this guy, he fits the bill. If the 700 pages and 15 years or however, 10 years of medical intervention can't fix you, what will? And another thing, you ought to go do a little research on this. The defense table acted so immature. It was an embarrassment. At one point, one of the female defense team members reaches up her right hand and pretends she's scratching her cheek and flips the judge off.

28:51 Okay, if we were in my 11th grade class and a kid did that to another kid, okay, that's bad behavior, but I get it funny, right? But if I were the parent of a dead child and that behavior came out of that defense table, the bailiff would earn his paycheck that day because mama would be coming across that table. I'm telling you and how dare you, the disrespect and we wonder, we wonder if our kids act like they do. She laughed with the killer afterwards. She laughed with him. Can you imagine being the parent? I have no words for that. So how about this, another little girl, her name was Alyssa. Alyssa's mom got up and I really, I really like the mama here and she said to him to the killer. She said, I would have had the courage to run in that building and would have taken the eight bullets for her. Her little girl, y'all took eight bullets and she said, I would have run in that building and taken the eight bullets for her.

30:08 And then she said, quote, I hope you are miserable the rest of your pathetic life. And there was like an intense stare down. She said, may your life be painful and show no mercy. He showed no mercy. Why? Why are we showing mercy to someone who refused to show mercy to others? So I don't know if y'all remember this case. I know I do. And again, this has nothing to do with, you know, any political thing or anything, but Matthew Shepard, do you all remember that case where he was a young gay little short, small, statured white guy and he was beaten to death and tied to a fence post and he ends up dying. That was in lyromy. But you know, there's a show out. It's an old movie.

31:06 You can probably find it maybe on Netflix or something, but I'll never forget the end of that movie, spoiler alert. When the entire movie, they're struggling, right now. I told you we wanted to talk about victims, but the whole movie is centered around the struggle of his parents, of what they wanted to do as far as the request of what should happen to the killers of him. Again, it was unprovoked. The defense at one point on this case tried to argue gay panic was why they killed him, which is the most absurd thing I've ever heard in my life, but we're going to play audio. Now this is from the movie, but I felt like the actor did a good job and we're going to play for you the victim impact statement read to the killers. And the dad here is who reads the statement. And there's a part in here you're going to hear what he says. I'm going to give you a grant you the gift of life. And I'm going to show you mercy because you were where you refused to show mercy to my son. And I hope you live a long, long life.

32:03 Go ahead and take a listen real quick. My son Matthew did not look like a winner. He was rather uncoordinated and wore braces from the age of 13 until the day he died. However, in his all too brief life, he proved that he was a winner. On October 6th, 1998, my son tried to show the world that he could win again. On October 12th, 1998, my first born son and my hero lost. On October 12th, 1998, my first born son and my hero died.

32:48 50 days before his 22nd birthday. I keep wondering the same thing that I did when I first saw him in the hospital. What would he have become? How could he have changed his piece of the world to make it better? Matt officially died in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. He actually died on the outskirts of Laramie. Tied to offense. You, Mr. McKinney, with your friend Mr. Henderson left him there by himself.

33:31 But he was not alone. There were his lifelong friends with him. Friends that he had grown up with. You're probably wondering who these friends were. First he had the beautiful night sky and the same stars and moon we used to see through a telescope. Then he had the daylight and the sun to shine on him. And through it all, he was breathing in the scent of the pine trees from the snowy range. He heard the wind. He ever present my oaming wind for the last time.

34:19 He had one more friend with him. He had God. And I feel better knowing he wasn't alone. Matt's beating, hospitalization, and funeral focus worldwide attention on hate. Good is coming out of evil. People have said enough is enough. I miss my son. But I am proud to be able to say that he was my son.

35:00 Judy has been quoted as being against the death penalty. It has been stated that Matt was against the death penalty. Both of these statements are wrong. I too believe in the death penalty. I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney. However, this is the time to begin the healing process to show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy.

35:54 Mr. McKinney, I am going to grant you life as hard as it is to do so because of Matthew. Every time you celebrate Christmas, a birthday, the Fourth of July, remember that Matt isn't. Every time you wake up in your prison cell, remember you had the opportunity and the ability to stop your actions that night. You robbed me of something very precious and I will never forgive you. Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of someone who no longer lives.

36:47 May you have a long life and may you thank Matthew every day. I feel the pain or I sympathize if you will, the pain of these parents when they're saying my god. You know, if people are like, oh, we got these killers get life in prison and that's worth in the death penalty. No, it's not. No, it's not. If you think that, then let's go right back to the audio we just listened to and discuss that for a second. Every birthday that these killers get to celebrate, their victims won't. Every holiday, every phone call from their parent or a friend, every visitation, every breath that they take, their victim doesn't. I don't ever want to feel what these parents have felt, but I recognize the fact that you know, having to decide or wanting to, getting to make the decision where someone lives or dies on a jury, I get that, that that is a heavy decision to make. However, I think in some instances, it's warranted. It is what it is. I mean, even the Bible doesn't eye for an eye, right? But the victim impact statements shouldn't be disregarded or thought of as vengeful because they're not

38:20 vengeful. They're getting to express how they feel. The dad that I was just talking about Mr. Shactor said that he's going to work to try to change the law to where it's not a unanimous jury decision on the death penalty. You know, in Louisiana, we have unanimous jury and I don't like that now. This case changed that for me. On one side of the coin, I do see how you could say, all right, well, you know, you are putting someone to death. We all should agree that it's that egregious, but this shows a failure to me. This is a failure. If that does not apply in this situation, then nothing will ever meet the muster. Now, again, I'm an illegal expert and just a human being, but I'm paying attention.

39:06 And I think that you ought to see what the law is in your state even. Check it out. What do you know about your state? That's just unacceptable. And I don't want you to think I'm vengeful or that I'm you know, bloodthirsty or anything like that. It's not that. It's that some people do not deserve to be amongst us when they have proven that they do not have any regard for our rules, our constitution, or for just general decency towards others. Mr. Shackard, another thing he said, this, I'm telling you, this guy was a boss. He even laughed at the psychologist.

39:48 I found her stood what he said correctly, which I think I did. The psychologist or the woman that was calling Cruz and befriending him was the mother of a Sandy Hook victim. Don't get it twisted. I am devastated for the Sandy Hook parents. I am so devastated for them. I remember seeing the newspaper release the day after Sandy Hook happened and there was a front page picture of me and my mom were going in Walmart. And on that front page, you could see the little little kids with their hands out, you know, like running away from the building. They were little and one little girl just stood out to me because she was taller, much taller than the rest of the other students and she reminded me of my daughter because my daughter who's 14 is they near a foot taller than me and she's always been the tallest in her class and it just really, it pulled at my heart because I'm like, oh my god, those babies.

40:43 But this is where I'd like to talk to people who this is not a political thing. This is just a just hear me out. The woman is calling Nicholas Cruz and this is documented and when they hang up she says, I love you to him. Like she is going to somehow love the evil out of him and he says, I love you too. And then on a write-up immediately after they hang up the phone and he goes back to his cell, he takes his hemorrhoid blood from his butt and paints six, six, six on his cell wall. This is why people who are in law enforcement or who have worked in corrections, a lot of people like, man, you're jaded or you're hard, you know, hard core towards people. Everyone can change. Everyone has the ability, sure, sure, everyone could. Yeah, well, I could get hit by a car today. I could solve, you know, world hunger, but I'm not. Okay. And I don't mean that, you know, yeah, do I mean it, I do. I mean it from my heart. Some people cannot be fixed and people look like fools when they're calling up here telling these people acting like they're going to love the evil out of someone. He makes a mockery of the sister.

42:04 He makes a mockery of that woman. And I think maybe in her heart she's trying to show love and mercy where it wasn't shown to her child. I get that and how admirable from a, just from a humanistic standpoint, how admirable that someone could try to turn tragedy into love. But this is he's making a full of you. You know, when I worked in the prison system, it always, I don't know how it made me feel, but I don't ever want to laugh at people. And I definitely don't want to laugh or look condescendingly down on anyone who would take their time to come into a prison and try to minister to the inmates. They are good people, you know, I go to church, I believe in Jesus. But they would come and just minister and preach to these men. And I would watch these men just accept it and oh, you're just changing their life and you know, look at all the happiness and the joy in the, in the clouds part in the birds saying the butterflies are flapping and not 10 minutes after those people walk out of the prison gates and go back home to their church and, and to their lives, which I'm not, I'm not knocking that, but not 10 minutes later. These guys are back up in the church looking for, I mean, back up in the prison, looking for dope, sleeping with one another and then visiting with their wives in the weekend. So I don't know, am I jaded or am I living in the real world because I know what I saw. I know what I, what I worked in. I know what, I know, I just know what I'm dealing with. And this guy is a prime example of the ain't worth the

43:39 oxygen. One of the brothers of one of the victims and I feel bad, I don't have his name written down right here, but I won't forget he, he stood up and he said, you need to look at me, but he was talking to the jury too. He said, there's no reason why this monster should be spared his life while my sister rots in a grave. Why is the killer getting grace that a victim didn't receive? I cannot wrap my brain around it. I am a nice person, y'all. I will give you the shirt off my back. I have tried to be kind, and I love people who are different than me, and I try to be kind to people, even if I don't agree with you because kindness is free. But there's not going to be a day that someone's going to do something to my kid of this level and me show an ounce of grace. I don't know if that makes me a bad person, maybe so, but my job on this planet is to protect these babies that I brought into this world and I'll be damned if it's not going to happen. And I know these parents felt the same way. I just would have slapped in the face. What an absolute slap in the face. So on the note of shootings, someone sent me a video of Ben Shapiro having the gun controlled debate with Pears Morgan.

45:01 Well, I think what would make sense is laws that are calibrated to solve the problem. So if you think that the problem is the only assault rifle, which guns would you remove? I think the ones that have largely been removed from the market, fully automatic weapons would be a good start. I think that you wouldn't remove any semi-albumics at all. And no, because semi-albumics just means that when you pull the trigger, one bullet comes out. You understand how easy it is for farmers, essentially? You understand how the AR-15 performance when it's been modified and has a magazine on the North Hollywood shootout. You know what? It was illegal to do that, and people did it anyway. We have 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. We're not able to stop people from coming illegally into this country over the southern border into places like California where I live normally. I think you'd be very hard pressed. You stop guns from coming across that border illegally as well.

45:44 I mean, California has some of the strictest laws. Would you want to be an American to have an AR-15? No, not every American. Who would you stop? I would stop anyone with a criminal background. I would stop anybody with a history of mental illness. And I would ask, I would require that people who have somebody who has a criminal background or a history of mental illness in the household keep that gun locked up and safe. What about the background checks? 40% of all gun sales in America now, gun trades are not covered by background checks. I believe in background checks for everybody, for everybody. So there should be a database, a national register? If it's not public. I don't like what happened with the journal news, putting out gun permits, which allows criminals to target particular homes. So ever the one to want to listen to both sides, I have my opinion, but I want to listen to both sides. I don't want to go political here, but I just want to go logic.

46:29 You know, there's a lot of discussion in this country of what should we do, right? If we didn't have these high capacity weapons, then these mass shootings wouldn't take place. Well, I'm just, I'm here to tell you, it's just that's not true. People will find a way when they want to hurt people. They will find a way. There's a case that happened. I don't remember what state it was, but these hairy christmas, they were having an election. I don't remember the state. I should have looked it up, but again, I'm not scripted, but they were having a election and these hairy christmas wanted to have control. And next thing you know, people start dropping dead in this in this county in the state and they can't figure out what's going on. And then when they finally solve it, they were going around Yarnham Rashonis, right? We had the buffet and you go get your food at the buffet. They were going around to Shonis and they were taking bottles of like spray pump bottles and spray in Salmonella on the food and getting everyone sick. And it was killing people because they wanted to stop people, they wanted to make everyone sick where they couldn't go out and vote so that they could win an election. Evil will find a way. You should go look up how many car wrecks happen in this country every day and you're going to go, damn, that's a lot of car wrecks.

47:39 But you'll notice that nobody says we ought to ban cars. Why do we want to take the good law abiding citizens and take away their right to bear arms because of evil? I don't, there's just not, that does not make sense. Dylan Clebold, Eric Harris and Columbine got their weapons illegally through somebody else. They didn't even have the ability to get them themselves. They got them through somebody else. Dylan Cruz, you know, we have to be smart with our weapons and that's part of gun ownership. If someone has a mental issue and you recognize that, why on green, this green earth would you ever give them a weapon? That's part of your duty as a weapon owner is to lock it up is to ensure that it is safe, you know, and if you don't like weapons, then don't buy them.

48:32 That could solve that problem for you too. But to argue that we want to limit the rights of people because we have this select few who don't follow the rules. It doesn't work that way. You know, the sad reality is that at these school systems, we have one school resource officer, maybe two. And, you know, they have a, what, a nine millimeter or 45 or something on their hip. They're going to have to go get their larger weapons. It's going to take time. I think the response in the parklin shooting was six and a half minutes, seven minutes, which is the average actually because I do teach 911 and our stat show, the average, like the national average is a seven minute response to the schools. But people say, oh, let's arm the teachers. That's a firm know and that's coming from a teacher. You have to understand police tactics and this country does not understand police tactics. We can go on a whole tangent there. But if you don't understand policing, we definitely don't want everybody to run around with a gun. We also, you know, the first rule of a gun is there's always one introduced into a altercation. And it's the one that you're carrying. So we don't want teachers who don't understand weapon retention, having a weapon on their side. And then possibly, I don't know, getting jumped by kid or if everyone knows they're wearing their weapon because they want to be bravado about it, you know, there's a million things that could go wrong there. I would think it'd be cool to explore if you had teachers that were willing to go through an academy, a legitimate academy, the law enforcement trained, understand scope of response and weapon retention, all that. Okay,

50:03 then maybe we're getting somewhere, maybe a couple on the campus, full out, arming of everybody in their mom on the campuses. I don't think that's the answer. To just say, do away with, I just don't see how that is the answer to this problem because you're not doing away with evil. It's not going away. Diabetes is not going away. Why? Because we know how to fix diabetes, but we're not getting rid of the behaviors or the genetic predisposition or, you know, it just doesn't work like that. You can't take evil out of people. Baning guns will not stop people from being evil. Go look at the statistics of how many people are killed by baseball bats. How many people are killed by hand strangulation? You probably be shocked. Uniform crime report, if you want to know where to look, it's called the uniform crime report. You can look up your county, you can look up your city, your parish, your state, you can look it up by region of the United States, do some research. Don't jump on a bandwagon just because someone says, hey, we should just take it all away because I don't think that's the answer.

51:01 I think the answer is we need to stand up, snatch and not in some of these kids' asses and start parenting. Number one, and when parents recognize in their own kids like Nicholas Cruz's mother, recognize that he was a nut, that's when we need to have mental health lock up situations, right? And again, I'm not an expert on mental health. I don't claim to be, but I do know that we got to do something in this country and everyone in their mama, including his mama knew that this dude was nuts and that he had the propensity for evil and nothing was done and you need to ask yourself why.

51:43 With that said, I think I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up for today. I got all, all hot and bothered by, by all the stress of, we got to do something and it's we as a people, all the good people. We don't have to agree on everything, but we should always agree that we got to stop evil and sometimes that means that we're gonna have to do things the hard way, but hell, if you're path demands that you walk through hell, we need to walk through it like we own the damn place. I actually have a special guest for you and if you remember, I had discussed a father that gave his impact statement and his final statements in regards to the parklin shooting and that his son was one of the unfortunate victims of that shooting and how much he touched my soul. Well, guess what?

52:42 I reached out to to that father, his name is Mr. Max Schachter and I am honored that I have him on the show today. So hello, Mr. Max, how are you? I'm doing okay, Kelly, thanks for having me. No problem. And I want to start out by telling our listeners that you are the founder and executive director of Safe Schools for Alex and he's a huge advocate for school safety. He is a corporate and governmental advisor and inspirational and entrepreneurial speaker from anguish to advocacy. Is there anything you would add to that? No, no, I just got back from Wisconsin and Phoenix and I was just in Ohio yesterday where I speak to law enforcement organizations, school districts, basically just trying to educate everyone about the lessons that we learned from parklin so that this never happened again. Absolutely. And I wanted to tell you this too and I hope you know from my from my heart, it is so genuine that I'm so appreciative of you taking the time to speak with me because I really feel like this is almost equivalent to you know opening someone's diary and I'm not supposed to be privy to those details you know and it's like I'm reading your diary and I can't imagine what that must be like to handle this on the you know in front of the world.

54:04 Yeah, no, it is it is hard but I appreciate you devoting a whole show to this to talk about what happened in parkland and and it's important because as I travel the country there is still so much complacency people don't think it's going to happen in their community and then I hope that after this conversation they will take an active role in the safety and security of their schools. 100%. So I wanted to say a few words to you and I want to see what your thoughts are on these few words. Chocolate Chip cookies Nutella Crapes, Yukon, Big Brown Eyes, Beef Pot Roast, Trombone, Brother, Anime, Rec Basketball, 105 pounds, 65 inches tall, 2018.

55:01 Yeah, that's my little boy. You love me. Yeah, you love me. Love Nutella and Nutella Crapes versus Bayer thing and yeah, he was he was he was all of that in more and yeah, we missed him a lot. And a sweet heart. Not that that makes it worse or better but it would a precious soul because I've been looking a lot at his photos and his pictures and you as an individual as a dad when I was following this on on the TV you personally stood out to me. So a lot of my listeners know that you know I'm a teacher as well as a commission deputy but also you know I do the podcast and I really focus on victims because they're not a headline you know this isn't some story just read and go wow that's terrible and then move on from it because it's forever right and you know tell me tell me this that day in Parkland how did that day start for you can you tell me kind of how it went?

56:10 Yeah, it was it was Valentine's Day and I was my wife and I were at the Silicon oven and how to how to great lunch and then we came home at must have been around two o'clock and and then at at two two nineteen the murderer walk through an unlocked unstacked gate at Marjorie Stelman Douglas High School and at two twenty one he pulled his AR-15 out of his guitar case that that he had that he had bought to conceal his his AR-15 and started shooting at at kids in the hallway and shooting from the hallway into every classroom down the hallway and into Alex's classroom and and then going floor to floor and and shooting kids again after he shot them one shooting them at point blank range with their hands up trying to protect themselves and and murdering teachers as well and then after so it must have been must have been as I think about it now what time that happened it must have been it like it's like two twenty five or two thirty that I actually got home now that I

57:41 think about it and the I'm on a band app I'm on the field crew of Alex these allisers in the Marjorie Stelman Douglas Ego Regiment Marching Band and they said that there was a shooting at Alex's high school and so I went over there I drove over there and as I got close it was completely bought blocked off with cars everybody was double parked and there was this roundabout that I I double parked in the roundabout and I walked over there you know casually you know my mind was thinking that I'm sure it's nothing and and if it is something you know I'm sure Alex is okay and then as I got over there I'm like this is crazy there's so much law enforcement I'm like what can I do is I walk back to my car and I'm walking back to the car my wife calls me and she's screaming at me and crying and she said I said what's going on what's wrong it just is Alex has been shot and I said what are you talking about she said well our our our our little neighbor down the street who was in Alex's class she saw Alex be shot and and so she said she's crying and she said you better get over there Alex has been shot and so I went to try to go back to school and this one guy said no sir so you can't go any further and then and said okay I said and then I went behind the

59:14 firm I'm like I'm going and I tried to go out further down the school and and then again I was blocked by by the Brad Sheriff's Office deputies and and he said don't worry I said you don't understand that my son's been shot he said well don't worry sir your son's been taken to the hospital and that's that's where I went I went to you know the hospital and my my other family went to other hospitals to try to find Alex and then at the hospital it was just chaos and crying and and then they said oh don't it's a miss or exactly we found your son I said oh fantastic thank God he's in the emergency room and I went over there to she said he's right there I'm gonna take you through the back entrance and and as we get in there she's like oh he didn't that that bed right there I opened the the the great and it's empty and come to find out that they got Alex Shactor mixed up with Alex Touarete who was one of the injured little boys and then nothing able to find him and and then we found out as we were driving home that that the family assistant center they were holding that at the Marriott Conference Center Conference Room and we got there we're doing like a hundred on the saw graph on the shoulder because it was bumper to bumper traffic um and then and then we got to the family assistant center and it just packed with people um everybody screaming and crying and

1:00:47 wanting to know where their their kids and their loved ones are and I had never seen so much clergy in my life and um and then you know that was at five o'clock and and then the law enforcement in the FBI couldn't tell me anything we met with them I'm like where is my where is my son she couldn't tell me I'm like don't you know I'm like can't you just look in the hospitals and see where he is right and so you couldn't she couldn't tell me anything and then as uh then that was five o'clock and then six and seven o'clock and I and be it so kept telling us we'll send us a picture of your loved one and I'm like I already did that and they're like what we need it again and so we did it again and emailed it to the email address they sent us and seven eight nine o'clock and gave us no information at all just telling us to send them pictures and it wasn't until one o'clock this morning where I got called into a little room in the in outside the conference center and uh it was with the FBI victim services and they told me that that Alex was was murdered in in margarie storm and Douglas and I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that you know as I was going to the hospital I called my called my older son Ryan and I said Ryan I said we can't find Alex and because I was looking at his life 360 and Alex always had his phone with him and his phone was was at that that that horrible school and um and and and Ryan said dad don't worry it's gonna be okay I said

1:02:24 noona I said Ryan you don't understand I said Alex might might not come home and he's like dad it's going we're gonna be okay so it's just just horrible and and my my older son Ryan was really the rock of the family I was very impressed by him didn't he sit next to you during the victim impact statement to read yeah yes I watched him yeah I um I just can't at you know you're in a club nobody wants to be a part of you know yeah um but did you as the day kind of went on and you realized like you know that the crowd started thinning at some point correct did you kind of get no no it didn't start I mean we were one of we were one of the first ones uh Pam Bondy the Attorney General's time you know we were one of the first uh victim families to be notified at like one or two in the morning geez yeah so I mean we were there for seven seven hours and no information so I read as well that the students had gone through a fire drill earlier in that day did you yeah can you confirm if that's true or not I think it's properly correct yeah yeah some people thought it was it was it was it real so I think that that contributed to the problem right so they said that there was a fire drill earlier in the day and then when the fire alarm sounded again that that afternoon I even saw one red one teacher said nope don't go out of the room I don't I wasn't

1:03:57 expecting this fire drill because you know as a teacher myself that's something that alerts me is that we know when fire drills are going to be had so if that fire alarm goes off then I tell my students stand by it was wait wait for an announcement or something because we were not expecting that yeah well that's that's the right thing to do but unfortunately in uh it's hard to restome and dug us they didn't have a passive um restraint system with the with the um with the fire alarm system and typically you're supposed to do what you did and uh what you tell your students is let's let's wait here 30 seconds and to make sure that administration confirms that there's a fire because you don't want to be sending kids out in the harm's way um but that's not what margarita when Douglas did even in light of the fact that we haven't had a kid die in a school fire in 70 years um everybody and there's 13 buildings on that campus everyone from every building even though they're all concrete that's what i'm gonna say hours are are sender block and sheetrock it's not gonna burn exactly and especially all of them all the 13 buildings at the same time it's you know it's it's not certainly not not making sense that that everybody should be evacuating everybody and so that but that's what happened everybody evacuated in and um and thank god you know the murderer tried to do along Vegas the after he was done shooting and killing people on the first and second and the third floor

1:05:31 he went to the third floor teachers lounge and and tried to do a lot of Vegas he set up a bipod and tried to shoot out the windows that all the evacuating students that were streaming out of the other buildings you're talking about 3000 kids that went to margarita storm and other tights goal to thank god he was unsuccessful because that was the newest building on campus and had um hercalling glass windows so the bullets fragmented as as they went out and it didn't it didn't work until he got frustrated through his gun down along with you know hundreds of rounds of ammunition and then fled and then he blended in with all the other students that were evacuating six minutes after the shooting and he went to McDonald's correct and sat down with the victim with one of his victims brother if I remember correctly yeah so so there was there there is a a subway in a Walmart near the near the um the school near the high school so he went to subway first uh where he ordered an icy to just kill 17 people and entered another 17 and then uh uh you know was went to go get an icy and then after that he went to McDonald's which is next to subway and he sat down with this kid that he had no he didn't even know um and the other kid didn't know him but uh his name was

1:07:02 Sean Wilford um Alex was on John Wilford basketball theme I know the Wilford and sat down with him and asked him for a ride home and uh thank god John did not give him a ride he had like the sixth sense to say no this is this is not right something wrong with this kid and he never gave him a ride but John additionally did not know where his his sister was Matty Wilford and and Matty was shot by the murderer of the same individual that was sitting in a booth uh which John asked him for ride home so and god John did not give him a ride home and then and then the murderer after not getting a ride home from John we'll start walking home and and he was arrested uh several miles down the road right he didn't uh he shouldn't have made it home um yeah did the made it home alive yeah that's what that's what i'm saying he should have been neutralized uh way before that but yeah yeah that would have been that would have been uh a lot better than than having to make a sit through that that horrible trial and fighting with us for for almost five years declaring his innocence and and then uh you know having to go through that trial yeah and so I um was disgusted by um well okay I know the constitution okay and I understand that we all have a right to you know a

1:08:37 defense I was disgusted by his defense team just utterly disgusted but I don't even understand I don't understand why why we need to go through this you know if you're a mass murderer you know you know uh you know check please you know yeah yeah you know I don't I why why do we need to pay for these mass murderers to stay on death row forever or or get like in prison there if you kill more than two people you're a mass murderer you should be put to death and and maybe if we were harsher uh instead of coddling these mass murderers like like the defense did putting their arm around him putting their hand on his leg wrapping with him maybe we wouldn't have so many mass murderers it's just a greed and I don't and excuse my friends but I don't give a damn about his childhood which we're gonna talk about in a minute that you discuss I don't care if you know things weren't you know the best for you or if you're you know came from a bad you know situation or whatever that doesn't give you the right or the excuse to go hurt other people and there's plenty of people who have come from way worse worse worse and have turned out to be amazing people so it's not an excuse I'm so over these mitigating factors that are supposed to mean something to me it means nothing to me nothing to me that you went and prayed on innocent people that did nothing to you did nothing to you exactly exactly innocent people innocent children uh you know beautiful souls that uh that you're

1:10:15 just you're just evil uh society has tried to rehabilitate you plenty of times uh your your you have your irredeemable and uh for for people out there to be defending them uh you know individuals you know like like like Scarlett Lewis that that that called him and called him and and said I love you it's just gross and disgusting and and nobody should should ever be nice or kind he doesn't deserve it he didn't give his victims any any kindness um and he should not get any in return right i just cannot even you know she's being she okay that mom was the mother of a sandy hook victim which I know in in a lot of people's lights you know would say it gives her a little a little latitude i guess to be able to have a little more to say or to do but while she may be kindhearted and and that's nice i guess you know he's taking her for an absolute fool i worked in the prison system i worked at Angola which is the largest all male maximum security penitentiary in in the United States i've worked amongst these guys and they they played the game they're nice in your face they say what they think you want to hear or what's going to get them what they want and they're laughing at you behind your back they're doing whatever i mean you even brought it up that that she says i love you on the phone and then he's right and six six six on the on the cell wall with his hemorrhoid blood

1:11:48 he doesn't give a shit about who he hurt he's still he's still writing letters saying that i want to kill more people and and and and telling other uh other people the next future school mass murder to go to go kill more people uh this guy should it should have been put to death he should have gotten the death penalty we have the death penalty in florida and uh any anyone for for who advocates for anything less than the parkland murderer to receive the ultimate penalty and injustice under under the law is is just disgusting to me i look you're you're preaching to the choir here i'm with you so just to just to give my listeners a list real quick and this is courtesy of your information during your final statement um they did try to make the argument that you know he fell through the cracks and you were like he is the he is the he is the crack you know so 15 sessions over 13 months of therapy that he got starting in what elementary school when he was younger direct language therapy multiple times per week weekly family counseling he got academic and social therapy through the school they prescribed medications 27 home visits 700 pages of therapy sessions turned in hundreds of hours of additional therapy that was also documented and admissions counselors said that he was in group sessions and then given individual sessions his GPA was a 3.14 his freshman year and he had good

1:13:19 attendance only missing two days 47 meetings with parent at his parent advocate his sophomore year he was getting weekly counseling by school and privately he continued sessions up until the shooting and he also had 77 disciplinary reports while he was in school yeah i mean when you were talking about he had you know x number of sessions you know that was over short periods of time you know for like for like you know 12 months or 15 months he had that those sessions he was in a a cluster or any as the cluster at a very very young age he was getting constant therapy not just for a couple of years for out his entire life uh you know they he had multiple psychiatrists multiple psychologists he had school counselors they were at I mean I'm not talking about just for a couple of years 50 with three years old he was getting therapy up until 18 they were at his house for hundreds of hours a you know of therapy there was at his house for hours a day giving him therapy getting his mother therapy to help her um be you know know how to handle her this the murderer and then or other some we were both monsters um they would destroy her house uh you know ruin you know punch holes in the wall destroy her furniture and um so how to propensity for violence too it wasn't like he was just crazy he was a a violent pain oh the defense defense said that he

1:14:55 was mentally at least mentally ill he was just a and he had uh anti social personality disorder he was a a sociopath and uh you know we he got every service that was available and then some the sheriff the M.S.D. commission uh sheriff Bob Dalteieri who was in a uh sheriff for a long time and who was also an attorney said that he's never seen anybody get more services than the parkland murderer so you know uh we we tried uh society tried to get him off his pathways of violence but but but what happened was his his IP that he had uh his individual uh exceptional you know education plan basically gave him a bubble of impregnability and so they prioritized the rights of the parkland murderer over every other get in the class and the teacher that was a great of him so that they never erected him you know we're all we're all in favor of getting to the second chance but not 77 of them and and law enforcement is at his house over 40 times you know in in some areas of the country and county there's like a a three-peat offender and over a 30 30 day period time or whatever you know if you're a repeat offender you know it should

1:16:26 be flagged and then they should go out and do something you know it's bullshit that they were at his house for dozens and dozens of times and never did anything um and and if he had been arrested and and there were uh arrestable offenses he punched his mother's teeth out uh he he hit her over he hit her uh with a vacuum cleaner uh hoes and you know in in other areas uh there's domestic violence laws that no matter if the if the the victim wants to press charges or not the law enforcement has an obligation to to arrest and and if he has been arrested he would not have been able to buy that weapon and and I I believe Alex would still be here today there's some individuals out there that that you know just needed to be introduced at the criminal justice system and and the problem is that the parkland murder was not and never had any consequences and he learned that so that as he got older he was violent starting at a very very young age from a little boy when he was three as he got more violent as he got older he got more violent and there were never any consequences and then when he and his mother was afraid of them and then when he turned 18 she bought him a gun yeah I don't I don't get that um I don't get that there I you know you you even said in your statement um that you almost felt felt for her in a way because she did try to do everything

1:18:02 for him I guess in terms of mental health that she could but why did she buy the gun did they ever yeah what is that about yeah I don't get that it was it was obviously a fatal error on her part um you know obviously I wish that she would not have done it but you know after she died it's not like he wouldn't have gone and done it her and himself anyway right right and I'll tell you this too I don't represent anybody when I say this I want to be crystal clear this is just me talking as an individual with no representation of any agency or school system or anything like that but you know I've had a student in my past years and years ago who heard voices from a young age documented and and stood up in front of my classroom one time and gave this manifesto about how he had a dark side and a light side and how he his dark side was starting to take over and that he wanted to hurt people and it scared the kids in my class so much that I even removed him and said look bro this ain't the room for that you know if you're having a meltdown we got to attack it a different way but you're not going to stand up here and scare people he even came back one time and pulled me out of class and I walked outside to try to get him away from the other students because I'm telling you within my heart and soul I thought he was going to shoot me and the student so I was trying to pull him outside of the school the school and we sat outside on a step while he told me how he wanted to murder his grandmother and I made a police report I even drove to his mother I left school it was that it was that painfully obvious this needed to be handled now I left school in my own

1:19:38 time drove to his mother and said we need to talk mother to mother right now not teacher to you know and I laid out everything that he was saying and doing and I was basically told thanks no thanks we'll handle it and that was a wrap wow our hands as teachers are tied as well because if we ride a kid up a bunch of times then we're being mean and picking on the kid if we don't ride the kid up they never get consequences for their actions if they have the IEPs and I'm not I'm not saying that everywhere I know I know administrators are doing the best they can with what they're able to do I'm not I'm not saying anything bad about any administrators but I think it's important to note here based on what you've said too that we need harsher consequences for their actions would you I mean if an individual obviously you know so we there's a federal law you know that you want you want to put kids in a least restrictive environment and you know we're all in favor of that but obviously so what happened was he did well in in in these more more smaller environments in in all these alternative schools and then when he did better then they said oh okay well let's let's mainstream them well obviously that shouldn't have happened so right certain kids should be in certain environments and

1:21:10 and and you know if you can't get an individual off the pathway to violence then then we've got to take a severe consequence you should have never been in JROTC where they're teaching them how to shoot a rifle I mean that was the last place that he needed to be was around guns with an obsession with guns and violence and and wanting to you know kill and mutilate and skin animals and was open about it too and he was open about it too like he didn't try to hide it like it's just beyond you know Alex should be you know at Yukon graduating and moving moving on with his life and instead this is where we're at because we we don't want to we don't want to be mean to a kid I just don't that doesn't that dog does not hunt with me you know something has to be done so I wanted to ask you this too once you got to court okay you knew the cameras were on you did that affect no I didn't I didn't initially I didn't know that and you know we learn I learned it over the time but I'm in court I'm not watching I'm not watching TV at home you know right so and you don't really see you know the camera's on in your face there's like a camera somewhere you know and you're I'm I'm intently watching you know the jury's reaction to the testimony and I'm I'm I'm death staring the the murderer of of of of Alex and and the jury that is that dressed him up as howdy duty and and lowered his chair all the way

1:22:45 to the ground and put him in a sweater like in a sweater vest and put glasses on him and and just created this you know facade to try to make him out to be the victim and so I was not eventually you know I learned you know that that they were I mean it's horrible and you know the you know we had not one medical examiner testified we had seven different medical examiners that that's fine just because there's so many so many victims right and when when the medical examiner was there talking about an individual victim like talking about Alex the camera pants to me and in cherish this ridiculous you know it was it was really an invasion of my privacy I felt like and that's what I was gonna ask you the the effect there seemed very cold that they would do that to you of course you're gonna be responding emotionally and and what was even harder was that you know the defense you know threatened that they were gonna call a mistrial and and that's what they did like you know they told us initially you know try not to show emotion I'm like what are you talking about they just told me my kid was murdered and and shot a multiple times and on a lot of the the testimony a lot of families it was the first time they were hearing such excruciatingly horrible details and so for they told us we couldn't we couldn't wear an Alex shirt I couldn't

1:24:18 wear a safe school for Alex shirt I couldn't wear an out a physical Alex pin I couldn't wear anything like that not only are a tire but we couldn't I couldn't it's always going to make a peak you know and and one time I made a gas and I was crying and I was just inconsolable hearing this news and and then it's been tried to get a mistrial because of that you know shift you're creating the it's like it's like it's like in favor of the the murderer you know that that you can't have a motion that's unconscionable I get you know looking at it from an objective point of view I get what what they're saying we don't want you to do anything that might you know affect the jury I guess if you will like the autopsy photos like your shirt somehow is gonna overthrow autopsy photos of murdered children yeah I mean that's just absurd but yeah I listened when they were going through and and I'll be brief on this I will I promise when they were going through the autopsy and what had happened to Alex and the killer didn't even really respond much he didn't have anything he just was doodling kind of on his paper and like it was another day and that you know like they they made it out like he was remorseful he was in remorseful he wants to kill again you know he enjoyed it he said that he loves to see the family suffer he wanted to torture and kill as many people as possible and he said that it go with the killed 20 people the only reason he stopped was because he

1:25:54 didn't think that there was anybody else to kill sick but let me let me tell you this that judge in the trial what were your thoughts on her no she was great she was great I mean we were frustrated that it took you know so long but but you know four and a half years but when we finally got going she was great she didn't she didn't put up with with bullshit from the defense and all their you know they're nothing motion and you know after the trial she delivered this beautiful speech you know telling you know talking about about the victims families and it was very very kind of her I thought she personally was a beast I loved it I thought and I played this in my classroom like you were in my classroom your son was in my classroom they learned about him they saw his picture you know what I mean and I told that the students I said they were like man she's tough I said yeah that's what we need we don't need cut we don't you know at this point we don't need kindness at this point they need to get we need we need to understand and remember who the victims are here the victims are not are not the the the the parkland murder is not the victims right the victims families are the 17 or the victims and and so you know even though the defense tried to paint him out as a

1:27:27 victim you know I think that that she was able to keep you know keep focus on who the victims were and it's hard you know because the the defense can get up there and and twist the truth and and and in the closing statement you know you can the the the prosecution can deliver all the fact of the case and then for the defense in the in her closing statement to say that basically you can ignore all the facts and just vote your conscience you know and and if you and if you vote forget your conscience will never you'll never forgive yourself and to ignore all the facts like why what are we here in the first place for that right why don't you have the trial well you know and something that stood out to me too are you familiar with the jody areas case yes I do remember that a mile ago right yeah and she had murdered her ex-boyfriend but in that in that in that case the reason she did not get the death penalty was because there was one holdout in the jury and is that not what happened in your y'all's case there was there was one heart no and then and then I think she convinced two others to vote for life as well but you know we're gonna we're gonna fix that yes in Florida and and fix it from majority from from unanimous to to majority in that's what it should be yeah there's a bill in the photo legislature to fix that that injustice

1:28:58 also and when is that going up do you know it's already it's already been presented I think it was a couple of weeks ago in committee so I I'm pretty confident that will pal I hope it does because you know before I don't think I quite understood the implications just whenever you're just reading about that happened because in Louisiana I think we just switched it to where it's got to be unanimous and I was like well I guess I get that because you're putting somebody to death but then after watching y'all's trial I'm like wait a minute wait a minute we're forgetting about who matters here and that's the victims not this is this is not a case this is not a case of like you know misidentifying the culprit of a crime or you know racial injustice or you know someone that was economically disadvantaged and they got convicted this is nothing to do with that you know this guy admitted it he's the one who did it he had he said he killed 70 people we know he did it you have him on video tape it's not a question he's guilty we shouldn't even have to go through this yeah and all it did was re-victimize y'all in my opinion you know that you had it and now and now we got it we got the trial of the the coward from Broward the school resource officer that that went to the front of the building and heard those gunshots and then went he got scared and went and hid behind the concrete pillar for the next 40 minutes and and his trial is coming up in in May which is going

1:30:33 to be horrible as well well and I took I have watched that video multiple times like multiple and I was dumb found it matter of fact Jim make a note we're gonna post that for our our listener so they can go watch it and really see what happened and that you're right he posted up right there he didn't even enter the building and in the radio traffic you know when he's going over the radio he's like do not enter this building yeah that that blew me away say 500 yards away say 500 yards it would know get your ass in that building and start putting some rounds down range and stop this guy slow him down change the target you know just unbelievable that that that really because I know the SRO where I work he's not playing that game he's coming in he's coming in and you know well I think you know I think a long time ago you know prior prior to you know Parkland there was and you know it shouldn't it shouldn't even have taken Parkland there was you know the SRO was the guy that was you know just a couple of years from retire and and and that was the Parkland SRO he was basically just retired on duty and and and now it's changed in Florida I hope it's changed around the country that you know this is this is not something that's you gotta be carefully selected it got to be very good with children they have to have taken deescalation training and and they have to be trained properly

1:32:07 but you know we can't have that kind of mentality you have to have a very serious individual with with tactical training that knows what to do to keep the kids safe absolutely and so you know I wanted to say something about another statement that you have made and then I want to move on to your to the safe schools for Alex because you have so much great stuff in there but when you said one hard question for you is that when people say you know how many kids do you have and I I personally have a testament I guess to that because my husband's brother was killed his father died when he was young and she would always say that was a hard question when people would say you know how many kids do you have and she didn't know how to answer it because you know her her youngest son is is 40 and her oldest son is 23 and it was really hard to answer so what do you do I have I have I have four kids and and one and one is not here because he was murdered in the Barcline school shooting so Alex will always be my little boy and and I love him more more than like it's now and we're gonna honor him too we're gonna put his pictures up on our site and I've got some wonderful ones of him playing in the band you know my oldest daughter is in the band and there's a picture of him in the band room and you could kind of see the lockers behind him and I have almost the exact same shot of my daughter holding her instrument it's bizarre like it's

1:33:42 bizarre and so they're the same age too and so just he's just touched my heart and you have as well and just you're you're so wonderful as a father you're everything that Alex could ever hope for on earth while he waits for you in heaven because you're doing him such a service you're you're doing wonderful so let's let's talk about um his point can I read that for you real quick is or for the listeners real quick so y'all y'all had found crumpled up in a trash can um that he had written a poem and it was for his English class and it's so and he was murdered and he was murdered in English class and he was murdered in that English class which there's some kind of beautiful tragedy to that but it was called life is like a roller coaster life is like a roller coaster it has some ups and downs sometimes you can take it slower very fast it may be hard to breathe at times but you have to push yourself and keep going your bar is your safety it's like your family and friends you hold on tight and you don't let go but sometimes you might throw your hands up because your friends and family will always be with you just like that bar keeping you safe at all times it may be too much for you at times the twists the turns the ups the downs but you get back up you keep chugging along eventually it comes to a stop you won't know when or how but you will know that'll be time to get off and start a new life is like a roller coaster what a old soul what a what a you know

1:35:12 what an amazing thing to leave you know for you yeah i we had no idea no it would completely blown away when we found that he never talked to me about about the poem I just found it and um you know he loved roller coasters obviously he didn't know what was gonna happen to his life but it's a great the beautiful poem that that is that is as legacy yes and i'm also i saw the video where someone was singing it as a song yeah yeah and i'm gonna put that link as well so my listeners can go listen to that it's just wonderful but yeah it's beautiful the one day what they did so let's talk about safe schools for Alex um what are your ultimate what are your ultimate goals with with your your mission here uh the the charity that that my wife and i started is to keep Alex's memory alive and to do everything we can to combat the the complacency that is around the country in people's minds that it's not gonna happen here so we we deliver you know best practices lessons learned to law enforcement to you know education uh you know school teachers and parents and so we created after the shooting one of my main our main initiatives is our school safety dashboard

1:36:45 and so after the shooting i am on the mfd commission which is the parkland shooting commission we were asked with investigating the tragedy and coming up with recommendations to make school safer throughout florida and i think that in florida schools are 180 degrees safer than where they were prior to the tragedy we're doing things here that no other state is doing and investing over 200 million dollars over the last five years in in school safety efforts and you know some states that you know did things in response to parkland and and then basically never did anything after that we we are not in that category we are continuing to push ahead and have our foot on the pedal um and we've got another school safety bill here to make uh school safer because you're never it's never done you're never complete it's never over you've got to constantly be evolving and and adapting and and making school safer so during the mfd commission meeting i found out that every school in florida is required to report incidents of uh violence and drugs to the state department of education uh there's 26 different incident categories things like bullying uh violence fighting assault weapons the number of weapons incidents that that when a kid brings a weapon to school that

1:38:18 cool safety incident is required to be reported to the state and so when i found out that the statics that i have you know three other kids in school and i want to make sure that nothing happened to them so when i went to go look at this data it was just a massive excel spreadsheet it was like millions of cells of data i'm like what am i gonna do with this and so uh there's no way to understand it and so we basically took that publicly available data and then incorporated it into a user friendly dashboard so for the first time parents are now able to go online and see exactly what's happening inside your school after you drop your son or daughter off i had no idea and Alex was going to school with a very violent violent individual and that dashboard is on the website yeah it's on state schools for Alex dot org and it's it's free and so we we've created the dashboard we've imported the school safety data from five states and our goal is to do that around the country every parent should know what's happening in their child classroom after they drop their kid off at school and every parent should use this information to advocate uh to make their child school safer but they need information first you know i never got a call from the principal of margarita man Douglas saying hey great new parents we reduced our bullying numbers by by 10% this year or the the numbers of violent incidents and fighting in assault on drop by by 15% i never got that call

1:39:54 because that called doesn't exist nobody's ever no parents ever gotten that call but parents should you should be able to go online and see exactly what's happening inside of school every parent has a right to know and the website really takes the blindfold off of off of parents so they can see what's happening in their kid school and they can become involved and and advocate for safer school and hey from a from a teachers standpoint i would love for people to know what we deal with that would be wonderful maybe you appreciate us more for what we're dealing with but yeah right something too that i'm really was uh inspired by and i'm gonna hope that i can get more information from you on this um is the safe schools for Alex student chapter where y'all are wanting to you know encourage i guess club a club to be made um yeah you know to to make us say a school save it can't just be from the top down you know the principal can't just do it by himself obviously leadership is important and and at margarita man Douglas you had no leadership the former principal ty Thompson uh was was a horrible leader when we interviewed him and uh he said that yeah he he he didn't really know if there were any threats to shoot up the school he said that wasn't really his job um when we asked him how many threats there were he really didn't know he was disinterested and uninvolved with the reticent process so obviously having leadership at your

1:41:25 school is important but the other piece to to that equation that you reference is involving the kids and the student uh they know where the vulnerabilities are on campus they do you know they know the kids that are thinking about hurting themselves are maybe hurting someone else and so i told my students too we had a we were just talking in class one day about school safety and school shooters because i do not want to dispatch as well and i said don't say any names i said but by a rate just raise your hands how many of you right now if i said there was a school shooter here how many of you think you could tell me who it would be and do you know about 75% of the hands went up wow and i said look around you and understand that your safety is in your hands if you will not speak up about it that will not stop it i said and i don't care if they're your friend i don't care if that's your cousin's brother excuse me your cousin's best friend or your brothers baseball team member i said they don't care where the bullets end up once they start shooting that does not give you some kind of free pass they're gonna get the mass amount of kills in the most short amount of time speak do you have do you have a um an anonymous tip reporting to the junior school we do we have an app but i think that when i ask the students i pull them and again i don't represent anyone or anything right now i'm just talking in generalities i don't represent a school or anything like that um but

1:42:59 when i pulled my students and was kind of like well why won't y'all speak up on the app they are so afraid of their name even though it's anonymous they are so afraid of it somehow coming back to them and then being labeled a snitch and then being pushed as an outsider that they they just don't do it and i said well you need to look you need to open your eyes and you need to go do some research then and see if someone would have said something well in your case everyone said something but yeah um you know if students voiced that they were afraid that might get someone's attention other than an adult saying hmm there's something wrong here i think with this child if you were physically afraid that wouldn't motivate you to do something to say something yeah yeah and so that's and so that's why it's important to have a school safety club and so that's why we started our our state schools for Alex club and um you know we've got we've got uh and it's important so and in this club you know the one of the first things that you know the kids would do is they would do a a survey of the kids uh anonymously to see do the kids on the campus feel safe are their vulnerabilities what would they like to as the improved in the safety uh of that school and so that's real important and and and and based on the results of that that survey it really puts them in it gives direction and action and um and

1:44:36 so and it's those two pieces you know is that the students working with administration to make school safer is the key to having a good a positive culture and climate on campus because if it's and if it's not um then you've got kids and and teachers uh with the attitude that oh well if I even say anything that nothing's gonna happen anyway and you got that negative culture and climate and that's when you have um our to restome and Douglas where you just sweep and everything under the rug and and not prioritizing safety and security well i'll tell you this i'm making it a personal um you know a personal goal of mine that i that i'm gonna do more with you um in my local community and i know we um maybe talked about that i'm not gonna release me that right now but i have full intentions of taking all that you have learned and mastered and sharing the knowledge the knowledge is the the wealth it's the power of getting the information out there and um i wanted to kind of close with this i know that you have the aliexshactor scholarship fund i saw that online with the trombone on it um yeah can you what is can you do a little bit tell me a little bit about that um yeah yeah so so during covid um my wife came up with this idea because our daughter is in the band you know she wanted to follow when her brother's footsteps and uh you know is this the daughter that scratched his back just to hang out with him yeah yeah i told you i listened to every word yeah she was cute she always liked to do Alex's hair uh she was Alex his little sister and she

1:46:13 loved Alex and so you know during covid you know the band you know being in the band is so wonderful for kids and for Alex that he really made his best friends you taught him you know what a work what a good work ethic is and and um he got you got you got good grades it built up his self-esteem in the band and so i think music in being in the band is really important for uh to build to build children's character and so what we found out was that you know during covid all these kids weren't having band and and we were afraid that they were going to put their instrument down they were pick it off again and so she came up with the idea to uh offer free private online music lessons and so that's where the uh let the music play on initiative came and so and so we we we love that and uh you know the more and so we started it in entitled one schools in in schools where there are very economically disadvantaged kids where the kids are on you know most of them are on free and reduced lunch and so those kids need all the help they can get and so um it's been been wonderful watching watching those kids you know become better musician well i'm a proud band mom so i'm right there with you so i think that that's wonderful and you're doing a great thing so um i wanted to tell you thank you so much for sharing um your most intimate and and painful moments with me and my listeners and for teaching us a little

1:47:46 bit along the way of some things some changes that need to be made well thank you for having me it's been been wonderful getting to know you and and i look forward to doing more things with you Kelly awesome well look thank you again and i just want to let all my listeners know that you know mr. shakter here's a force to be reckoned with and i think that he is everything like i said before that that little Alex needed had and continues to have in this world and if there's anything i know an utterly fearless man is forever more dangerous than a coward with a gun (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (dramatic music)