Gov. Scott visits victims of Wednesday’s school shooting, says “something needs to change”

by | Feb 15, 2018


 

Gov. Rick Scott says “something needs to change here, we cannot continue to have this violence.” Scott’s comments came during In an interview on Fox News Thursday morning from Parkland where 17 people were killed in yesterday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Scott traveled to Parkland yesterday afternoon after receiving news of the shootings and has been meeting with law enforcement and local officials. He was in California Wednesday for a fundraising event when he was told of the incident.

Late Wednesday, Scott ordered “the flags of the United States and the State of Florida to be flown at half-staff at all local and state buildings, installations, and grounds throughout the State of Florida until sunset on Monday evening” in honor of those killed. He then visited Broward North Hospital where many of the victims of the shooting are being treated.

“I am going to stay here as long as it takes to make sure we have all the resources that we need,” Scott said. “We are going to make sure that we in this state figure out how to stop violence at our schools…we can’t save the lives that we lost here, but we’ll do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Scott promised the state will have a “real conversation” on how to prevent such tragedies in the future.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, also appearing on Fox Thursday morning said “what happened in Parkland “can happen anywhere, it just takes one person with the wrong circumstances and you get into this situation.”

“You have to look at the totality. It’s not just a guy your getting some calls about doing weird things,” Rubio said in regard to a series of reports regarding unusual behavior by the alleged shooter and whether that behavior should have raised a red flag for authorities. “It’s a guy putting up all these things up on social media. It’s a guy who has had problems and threatening people at school. And, so, when you put the full picture together you start to say this is a person who could be a very serious problem and then what can you do about it, how can you get ahead of it, how can you jump on that and prevent it from happening? And that’s the problem here. We look at these things in an isolated way and not in their totality.”

Rubio is from Miami, less than an hour south of Parkland where the shooting occurred. He says he’s very familiar with that community and calls it “one of the safest places in America.”

He says it’s the last place where you would expect such an incident to occur.

“You’re not likely to get mugged there or get carjacked there, your home is not likely to get broken into there. It’s a very safe community,” Rubio said, “This is an isolated instance, but a very tragic and catastrophic one.”

 

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