Parkland shooting: How the attack unfolded

Swat officers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (file picture, 2018)

Seventeen people were killed and 17 others injured on 14 February, 2018, when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was an expelled former student then aged 19.

He pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and attempted murder in October of last year.

He was heavily armed when the Valentine's Day massacre began. Here's how the shooting unfolded.

Attack begins: 14:19 local time (19:19 GMT)

The gunman arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, carrying a rifle, ammunition cartridges and smoke grenades.

Shots started ringing out at 14:21, shortly before the end of the school day.

The gunman began by shooting in rooms 1215, 1216 and 1214, and returned to 1216 and 1215 before moving on.

He set off a fire alarm so people would leave the classrooms and pour into the corridors.

Many students thought it was a drill because a fire alarm practice had taken place earlier that day, but then they heard the sound of shooting.

"I heard about six gunshots and then some people started running," Student Jeiella Dodoo told CBS News at the time. "And then everyone started running because we were like, 'If it's real, then just run.'"

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He fired multiple times at students and teachers, and killed three people outside the school before entering one of the teaching buildings, where he killed 12 more, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. Two others died of their injuries in local hospitals.

Witnesses described how students hid anywhere they could as the shots rang out in the building, which houses 30 classrooms.

Survivor Kyle Yeoward, then 16, said he and about 15 other students and a teacher hid in a storeroom for about two hours until police arrived.

Police said the gunman had been carrying an AR-15 rifle, which he had bought legally, and several magazines of ammunition.

Police arrive

Students being led from the scene of the shooting

Police and Swat team members swarmed the campus and began clearing students from the school. Parents and ambulances also converged on the scene.

Students were led off the campus by heavily armed police officers.

Gunman leaves: 14:28 local time

The gunman, concealing himself in the crowd, was among the hundreds of people fleeing the building, authorities said.

He had dropped his weapon and other kit on the third floor and walked down several flights of stairs before leaving the building, heading to the school's tennis court and then running alongside evacuees.

The gunman then went into a Walmart, bought a drink at a Subway store, and then went to a McDonald's and sat down at 15:01.

He was captured by police in the nearby town of Coral Springs, just a few miles from the school, about an hour after the attack.

He was taken to a nearby hospital before being released into police custody.

How does the attack compare?

At the time, the Parkland attack was the deadliest school shooting since 2012, when 20 young children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Its death toll has since been surpassed by a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on 24 May 2022, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 21 people, including 19 young students and two teachers, and injured 18.