Families of Parkland shooting victims to get $127.5m settlement for FBI inaction on gunman warnings

The shooting took place at a Florida high school in February 2018

People sit in front of a photo display of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during a mass shooting on February 14, 2022 in Pine Trails Park in Parkland, Florida (Getty Images)

The US Department of Justice has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the families of most of those killed or injured in the 2018 Florida high school massacre.

The FBI was unable to stop the gunman despite intelligence inputs on his plan to attack, federal officials said on Wednesday.

A release announcing the civil settlement worth $127.5m read: “Today, the Department of Justice announced that it has settled the 40 civil cases arising out of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.”

This settlement resolves all of the cases for $127.5m, the department said in a statement, calling it the “deadliest high school shooting in US history”.

It added that the parties have been in litigation since late 2018, right after the the survivors of the shooting, and the families of 16 people killed, sued the government for damages.

The settlement was confirmed by the attorneys for 16 of the 17 people killed at the Parkland high school. Those injured in the shooting had confirmed in November last year that they had reached a monetary settlement with the federal administration.

Families of those killed and injured had accused the FBI of failure to investigate a tip off it had received about a month before the incident happened.

Convicted Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz is seen in court

The Justice Department said that the monetary settlement with the families does not amount to an admission of fault by the United States.

A former student of the high school walked in on the premises on 14 February 2018, armed with a rifle and ammunition hidden in a rifle bag. Shortly after, he opened fire with his semi-automatic weapon. At least 17 people in the school were killed and 17 more were injured.

The shooter Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilt on all 17 counts of premeditated first-degree murder in October last year. He also pleaded guilty on another 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder.

Nearly five weeks before Cruz walked onto the campus on the day of shootout, the FBI tip line had received a call stating that Cruz, a former Stoneman Douglas student, had bought guns and wanted to “slip into a school and start shooting the place up”.

The caller said: “I know he’s going to explode”.

Despite the alarming information, the call and its details were never forwarded to the FBI’s South Florida office and Cruz was never contacted.

The 23-year-old former student was expelled from the school in 2017 and reportedly had a long history of emotional and behavioural problems.

Cruz is likely to receive a death sentence or life in prison as the trial is set to be heard in April.