Classes resume at Florida high school two weeks after massacre

PARKLAND, Fla., Feb 28 (Reuters) - Students and teachers traumatized by one of the country's deadliest mass shootings returned to classes on Wednesday with white ribbons and white roses to honor the 17 people killed by a gunman in their Florida high school two weeks ago.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reopened most of its doors for about 3,000 students at 7:40 a.m. EST (1240 GMT) for a half-day schedule. The building where most of the victims died will remain closed indefinitely.

Nicholas Rodrigues, 15, a freshman who lives in Coral Springs with his parents and two sisters, said he walked the mile to school on Wednesday rather than ride his Black Mongoose bicycle because “wanted to think about things.”

School buses arrived shortly after 7 a.m., with several hundred police officers on hand to escort students, who wore the school's colors of burgundy and white, to make them feel safe.

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was killed in the massacre, said he was not afraid for his surviving son, also a student at Douglas, because it is now the safest school in America.

"But [it's] bittersweet because my son walks in here without his sister," Guttenberg told CNN on Wednesday. "This is not what we envisioned for ourselves watching our kids go through high school."

State legislators are considering a bill that would pay to demolish Building 12, widely known as the freshman building, and replace it with a memorial to the victims of the Feb. 14 massacre.

Teenage survivors of the carnage have launched an extraordinary student-led campaign to lobby lawmakers on Capitol Hill and the statehouse in Tallahassee for new restrictions on firearms.

But many express deep trepidation about returning to the scene of a shooting rampage that ranks as the second-deadliest act of gun violence at an American public school.

"It’s just really hard to think about," David Hogg, a senior who has become one of the school's leading gun-safety activists, told NBC News on Tuesday. "Imagine getting in a plane crash and having to get back on the same plane again and again and again and being expected to learn and act like nothing’s wrong."

A former Stoneman Douglas student, Nikolas Cruz, 19, who authorities say was expelled last year for unspecified disciplinary problems and had numerous run-ins in the law, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

ALLEGED GUNMAN DUE IN COURT

As surviving students faced a daunting return to the hallways and classrooms where classmates and teachers died, Cruz was due back in court on Wednesday for a hearing to determine whether he has the assets to pay for his own defense. His mother died in November.

He is accused of carrying out the shooting rampage with a semiautomatic AR-15-style assault weapon that he legally purchased from a licensed gun dealer last year, when he was 18 years of age.

Besides reigniting a national debate between advocates of tougher firearms restrictions and proponents of gun rights enshrined in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the shooting as raised questions about the role of law enforcement in events leading up to the massacre.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have faced criticism that they failed to properly follow through on multiple tips warning that Cruz had the potential and capacity for deadly violence.

Sheriff Scott Israel has come under heavy criticism after disclosing that one of his armed deputies, assigned as the school resource officer, stayed outside of the building while it was under attack rather than make entry to confront the gunman. The deputy later resigned rather than face disciplinary action, Israel said.

The sheriff has acknowledged his office is examining reports from a neighboring police department that three more deputies who were present took cover outside the building with guns drawn rather than go into the school immediately.

Israel, a Democrat first elected sheriff in 2012, has said that calls for his removal by a group of 74 Republican state lawmakers is politically motivated and that he has no intention of stepping down.

On Tuesday in Tallahassee, the state capital, the House Appropriations Committee voted to raise the minimum legal age for purchasing all rifles to 21 from 18 and impose a three-day waiting period for any gun purchases. Buyers of handguns must already be at least 21 and submit to a three-day wait.

The measure also would create a statewide program to arm specially trained teachers - subject to school district approval - while assigning more police as school resource officers and allowing police to confiscate weapons from people who are involuntarily committed as a danger to themselves or others.

In addition, the measure would outlaw the sale of bump stocks, devices that enable semiautomatic rifles to be operated as fully automatic machine guns. The panel rejected a Democratic-backed amendment to ban assault-style weapons, like the one used by the gunman in the Florida school attack.

The package now must win approval in the full Republican-controlled legislature before it goes to Governor Rick Scott, also a Republican, for his signature. (Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York and Bernie Woodall in Parkland Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Bill Trott)