The state commission investigating the Parkland school shooting turned Wednesday to the aftermath of the massacre, when family members said death notifications were handled in a sluggish, chaotic, insensitive manner.
Debbie Hixon learned of her husband Chris’ death when her phone starting beeping with condolence texts from friends who read about it on Facebook. She threw her phone across the room. Hours later she received the official word.
Tony Montalto and his wife, Jennifer, were brought into a glass-walled room off a hospital cafeteria, where everyone around could watch their reaction to the death of their 14-year-old daughter, Gina.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, meeting on Wednesday at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, heard of mistakes, chaos and bureaucratic insensitivity on the night of Feb. 14, 2018, as family members of murdered students and staff received the terrible news.
They described a horrifying scene at the Coral Springs Marriott at Heron Bay, where families were told to go for word of loved ones. Their numbers dwindled as students and staff who had fled the school turned up.
As the remaining families waited to be brought to a smaller room one by one for news of loved ones, they could hear screaming and crying coming from the room.
“It was like waiting to be slaughtered,” one family member said, according to a presentation by one of the commission’s investigators.
Family members and members of the commission said they did not blame the officers on the scene, who they said did their best under the policies and leadership they had to live with.
“I can tell you that the people I know — the boots on the ground, the deputies, the detectives, the personnel of the Broward Sheriff’s Office who were involved with this — are extremely caring people who care about you all,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the commission, said to a panel of family members who told their stories. “If there’s room for improvement, I would suggest that it’s above them. This isn’t about them. It’s about a lack of policies, a lack of processes.”
But he said it appeared that there was not an incident commander on the scene and that the sheriff’s office either lacked an effective policy on how to handle such an event or didn’t follow it. Family members expressed anger at former Sheriff Scott Israel, who they said should have seen that his agency was ready.
“The BSO leadership’s failure to prepare for the possibility of this event — even in the wake of the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport — added confusion, false hope, anxiety and frustration to the worst day of our lives,” said Tom Hoyer, who testified with his wife, Gena, about how they learned of the death of their 15-year-old son, Luke. “That night at the Marriott — when we sitting in the room for hours — Gena and I will always remember that as an emotional endurance test from hell.”
Israel was suspended from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis over multiple failures by his agency that came to light after the shooting. The commission has asked the sheriff’s office to respond to the families’ statements at the commission’s June meeting.
Veda Coleman-Wright, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said a death notification policy had been in place at the time of the shooting. She said the sheriff’s office’s internal Stoneman Douglas committee “continues to review everything that took place, and improvements will be made where needed.”
Among the common concerns in Tuesday’s report to the commission: A lack of communication about where to go, the absence of anyone in charge, disorganization at the Marriott, incorrect information given out to families, the lack of a single point of contact for families and the failure to keep the news media far enough away.
After receiving the news, families said they were given little support. They had been separated physically from friends and family; there were no victims’ advocates there; they didn’t receive from authorities much empathy or information about what to expect over the next few days. Some said they weren’t offered a ride home.
“There was a room full of officers who were doing nothing really because they didn’t have a directive,” Hixon said. “It would have been nice if they would have assigned one officer to each of the families, so we would only have to communicate with one person, if we had questions for them or they had questions for us. Numerous times we were brought into a smaller room and asked for photos, date of birth, continually.”
After leaving the hospital, Montalto said he and his wife had to make his way unescorted past the media.
“Once we left, visibly shaken, nobody walked us past the press or anybody else that was out in front of that hospital,” he said. “Nobody gave us a piece of paper that said in the coming days follow this process and we’ll be reaching out to you as well. … It would have been nice to have an escort to the car. It would have been nice to maybe be driven home after hearing such terrible news.”
Fred Guttenberg learned of the death of his 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, from a detective friend after receiving no information from authorities. At about 1:30 a.m. at the hotel, he and his wife, Jennifer, received the official word from the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
“I hope that out of this comes kind of a textbook on how to deal with the notification process when a mass event like this happens,” he said in an interview during a break at the commission meeting. “I just spent the weekend with the Pittsburgh temple families and their experience, and it wasn’t a good one, was almost a mirror of what we went through, and it clearly shows there needs to be a plan that people practice.”