Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, head of Florida's state-appointed commission investigating the Parkland shooting, said today that video from inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School showed the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, had to reload his AR-15 assault rifle several times.
"There were several other times when he was in that school that his gun was empty," the sheriff said, noting that the rifle had a six-round magazine. A reload break allowed a teacher on the third floor of the freshman building to move students away to safety, he said.
"If he had somebody in there with a gun, they could have mitigated this," the sheriff said. "There were opportunities for staff to have intervened if they had been armed."
The only armed guard on campus, Deputy Scot Peterson of the Broward County Sheriff's Office, remained outside the building during the shooting. He resigned and has since said he was not sure where the gunman was.
