Thread: Emotional Florida dad, speaking at shooting massacre vigil, recounts seeing his daugh

Emotional Florida dad, speaking at shooting massacre vigil, recounts seeing his daughter for the last time

By Nicole Darrah | Fox News
5 hours ago

Speaking to hundreds of people at a vigil in Florida Thursday night, father Fred Guttenberg described seeing his 14-year-old daughter for the last time Wednesday morning, just hours before she was killed in one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history.

Speaking to the crowd of mourners at the Pine Trails Park Amphitheater in Parkland, Fred explained that during the rush of his family’s morning routine, “sometimes things get so crazy” and Jamie would run out of the house with an “I gotta go, dad!” without fully saying goodbye.

“I don’t always get to say I love you,” Fred said of their mornings. “I don’t remember if I said that to Jamie yesterday morning.”

Fred, whose son Jesse survived the massacre, told the crowd that his main priority is to protect his children.

“She was supposed to be safe,” Fred said about sending his daughter to Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School Wednesday morning. “My job is to protect my children, and I sent my kid to school.”

“Jamie was such a special kid,” Fred said, looking back on his daughter. “She was the life of the party, she was the energy in the room. She made people laugh, and yes, sometimes she made us cry. But she was always known. She always made her presence felt.”

Jamie Guttenberg volunteered with The Friendship Initiative, an organization that "brings kids with special needs together with their peers who are all student volunteers,” founder Jeb Niewood told Fox News. (Abbie Youkilis)

Fred, who added he recently lost his brother to a Sept. 11-related illness, said: “What is unfathomable is Jamie took a bullet and is dead. I don’t know what I do next.”

In the midst of Wednesday’s chaos, Fred wrote on Facebook that his son was found safe, but that the Guttenbergs “cannot reach Jamie.”

He later confirmed that Jamie was killed in the shooting.

“My heart is broken,” Fred wrote. “We lost our daughter and my son Jesse Guttenberg lost his sister. I am broken as I write this trying to figure out how my family get's through this.”

In Parkland Thursday night, Fred said that his family is “broken,” and said that children need to understand that “when you look at us parents like we are crazy, like we are trying too hard to protect you … just remember it’s because we love you, and we never want to go through the tragedy of losing you.”

“Parents,” Fred said, “Love your kids, hold your kids, kiss your kids, and don’t ever, ever miss the chance to tell them how much you love them.”

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/15...last-time.html

It's so terrible, so sad.

Parents, please, please, go to your schools, every school, no exception, and tell your school officials you demand locked doors during class-time. They're simple commercial style steel doors with automatic closures, emergency exit bars on the inside, that close and lock automatically every time the door is opened and allowed to close. You can get out if you need to, but you can't get in until someone opens the door for you.

Parents, also, please, please, call the FBI and tell them you demand answers to why they didn't follow up on the tip they got about Nikolas Cruz 6 months ago in September of last year. There are 12-13 Nikolas Cruz's in the US according to Fox News, 6 of these are in Florida. Any search for Nikolas Cruz that Fox News did, the FBI could do, and you could find them all, send local police out to investigate, and voila, you would have had the local police or Sheriff's Department in Parkland, recognize the name right away because they had been called to Cruz's home by his mother, 39 times between 2011 and 2016. She died from the flu last November.

You have to stop making demands of Congress, Congress can't help you. You have to lock your doors at your schools during class-time and pray this President cleans up what is clearly an FBI in tatters, dysfunctional from its rotten core and arrogance. No honest FBI agent would have refused to search for Nikolas Cruz and any competent FBI agent who looked for him would have found him in 1 day. So the FBI was more interested in the bail bondsman than they were in the school shooter. But safety starts at home, and by that I mean, at your school, lock the damn doors and keep them locked during class-time. Do not use glass doors that you can shoot out and break, then walk through, use steel doors. Architects and contractors can solve this security problem for you in 2 hours. FIX IT. Secure your schools with locked doors during class-time.