Student who survived school shooting sends strong message to lawmakers

Florida school shooting survivor David Hogg has a message for U.S. lawmakers: “Work together.”

“No matter what policy you support, you guys are politicians. Make some compromises, get some stuff done and keep doing it. Actually keep your promises. Don’t just make false promises just so you can get re-elected. Actually follow through. 

“And who knows? Maybe you’ll save some children’s lives, because the amount of deaths that I’ve had to deal with, with my sister having three of her best friends die, and the numerous other families that have to go home to silent rooms for the rest of their lives with no children, is absolutely unacceptable. It’s deplorable. And something has to change. 

“The policy makers in this country must work together. And I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. These are children’s lives. That’s the end of the line. And if you want to have mental health reform, you support that. If you want to have universal background checks, you support that. Why not do both? Politicians compromise and we can get this done. It just a matter of overcoming our political barriers in order to save children’s lives, and in that way, our future too,” Hogg said Friday on “CBS This Morning.”

Hogg was one of the approximately 65 students sheltered inside culinary arts teacher Ashley Kurth’s classroom after a gunman opened fire Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed in America’s deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Alleged shooter Nikolas Cruz, 19, faces 17 counts of premeditated murder. He had been expelled from Stoneman Douglas High for “disciplinary reasons.”  

Hogg, a student journalist, interviewed fellow students on video during the mass shooting. 

“After we realized this wasn’t a drill, I knew that if I was going to die with those around me… I wanted our voices to carry on and proceed the ages of time, because even if our souls couldn’t, our stories could still have an impact and cause some real change in this country. That is certainly something that we all need right now,” Hogg said.    

Hogg praised Kurth and thanked her for her “heroic actions.” Kurth said she had gone through a recent training as well as an active shooter training at her previous school.

“I remember I was shaking as I was trying to put my key into the door and my head was sticking out and you could see all the kids pouring out of the freshmen building, just screaming, terrified,” Kurth told “CBS This Morning.”

She said she tried to grab as many students as she could.

“They were running by, and the ones that were still running, I just kept screaming at them, ‘Keep running! Don’t stop!’ Because at that point you were hearing gunshots go off and it was ricocheting with the sound off the other building and we didn’t know whether it was one shooter or two,” Kurth said, adding, “It was very intense.”

“It feels like it was like an hour, but in reality, it was like 30 seconds,” Kurth said.