Kamala Harris to tour blood-stained building where 2018 Florida school massacre happened

Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday is expected to tour the blood-stained classroom building where the 2018 Parkland high school massacre happened, accompanied by some victims' family members who are pushing for stricter gun laws and improved school safety.

Harris' visit will be the latest by elected officials and law enforcement and education leaders in recent months to the boarded-up, three-story building, which stands on the north side of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The tragic landmark has loomed over the school's 3,600 students from behind temporary fencing since the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting that left 14 students and three staff members dead and 17 wounded.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona toured the building in January and several members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have gone through since law enforcement returned custody of the building to the school district last summer.

When Harris goes inside, she will see bullet-pocked walls and floors still covered in dried blood and broken glass. Shoes left behind by fleeing students and wilted Valentine's Day flowers and balloons are strewn about. Textbooks, laptop computers and papers remain on desks. Only personal items such as backpacks and purses have been removed.

Former student Nikolas Cruz, then 19, fired about 140 shots from his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle during his six-minute attack. He pleaded guilty in 2021.

“The building is a time capsule,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Stoneman Douglas graduate who helped organize the visit. Harris, he said, will “learn about the failures of the building, the failures of the response to the shooting by law enforcement, the failures in the training of the teachers, the failures of threat