The federal government will pay a $127.5 million settlement over the Parkland, Fla. school massacre — after it admitted the FBI didn’t follow up on two tips that could have prevented the massacre.
The legal deal announced Wednesday settles 40 lawsuits tied to the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which remains the largest high school shooting in US history.
The Department of Justice did not admit fault in the shootings, and the settlement “resolved all the cases” filed against the government by family members of the 16 shooting victims and all the survivors of the attack, a news release said.
Nikolas Cruz, 23, had pleaded guilty to killing 17 students and staff members at the school, and trying to kill 17 others when he opened fired on his former classmates and teachers with a semi-automatic weapon on Valentine’s Day in 2018.
The FBI mishandled two tips about the gunman in the months before the shooting, officials conceded to Congress a month after the shooting.
In one instance, a YouTuber had told the bureau that Cruz had posted “Im going to be a professional school shooter” on the comment section of one of his videos.