The terrified students who survived Wednesday's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, include Ben, a 15-year-old Israeli-American who was barricaded in a classroom and managed to text his father as the massacre unfolded, killing 17 of his schoolmates.
"There's a shooting at my school I think," Ben texted to his father.
"So you are safe. Tell me that you are safe. Please," his father texted back.
"There's dead people … omg abba [Dad]… scariest shit ever abba," Ben responded.
When his father begged his son to assure him he was safe, Ben wrote, "We can't make noise … don't call me … I love you too."
Ben's mother, Levana, said that her son, who is in the ninth grade, was in a classroom on the third floor, where the shooter opened fire.
"I tried to contact with my son and he didn't answer. From the moment it happened, only eight minutes went by until he made contact, but in my mind, it was an eternity," Levana said. She said her son had seen "difficult sights, bodies lying on the floor covered with flowers and teddy bears they'd gotten for Valentine's Day."
Levana said her family had been in Parkland for 17 years.
"It's a really quiet suburban neighborhood. Everyone here is well-off. The school is one of the best high schools in the area," she said.
Noa Golan, 16, another Israeli student at the school, said, "We heard shots and screams. My teacher told us to run outside, so that's what I did. When I left the school gates I called my mom in hysterics."
Noa's mother, Limor Golan, said, "Noa called, frightened, and screamed that she had heard shots. She could barely breathe. She couldn't get the words out. I told her to lie down on the ground and not move, but in the end, she left school and made it home. The rest of the parents and I had a hard time getting to the kids because all the streets were blocked off."
Limor Golan said that when her daughter arrived home, she texted her friends who were still at the school.
"So as not to stress them [further], she texted that no one had been killed and they told her that they were hiding under a table, with orders from the teacher to silence their phones so the shooter wouldn't hear them," Golan said.
"The school is fenced and guarded, so we can't understand how the shooter got into the ninth-grade building holding a really big gun. I would never have believed something like this could happen in our area," she added.
Rabbi Jonathan Kaplan from the local Temple Beth Chai told Israel Hayom that he had met with the family of Jaime Guttenberg, 14, one of the 17 students murdered on Wednesday.
"I met Jaime's brother, Jesse. He's in the 11th grade. He heard the shots. He lost his sister, and now he's saying he's not going back to school. What do you do with that?" Kaplan said.
Kaplan has lived in Parkland for 30 years and says the excellent schools are one of the things that attract people to the community. He said the Jewish community – which lost five young people in the shooting – is occupied with arrangements for the funerals and the shivas, the traditional seven-day mourning period.
In a heartbreaking post on his Facebook page, Jaime's father, Fred Guttenberg, wrote: "My heart is broken. Yesterday, Jennifer Bloom Guttenberg and I lost our baby girl to a violent shooting at her school. 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 gets through this. … Hugs to all and hold your children tight."
As Parkland mourned, authorities said Thursday that shooter Nikolas Cruz, 19, had legally purchased the assault rifle he used and may have foreshadowed the attack in a social media comment investigated by the FBI last year.
New details about Cruz's troubled background and gun ownership emerged as he appeared in court to face formal charges of carrying out the second-deadliest mass shooting at a public school in U.S. history.
Authorities also shed more light on how he managed to get away after the massacre by blending in with students fleeing the school, then casually spent more than an hour drifting through a Walmart store and visiting two fast-food outlets before he was arrested.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation disclosed that it received a tip in September about an online message that read: "I'm going to be a professional school shooter." The comment had been posted to someone else's YouTube video by a person using the name Nikolas Cruz, now presumed to be the same person as the suspect in the Florida shooting.
However, FBI agents had no information pointing to the "time, location or true identity" of the person behind the message, Robert Lasky, special agent in charge of the FBI's Jacksonville office, told reporters.
YouTube ultimately removed the message, and the FBI's inquiry was dropped until the name Nikolas Cruz surfaced again in connection with Wednesday's massacre.
Authorities say the gunman, identified as a former student at the school who had been expelled for disciplinary problems, walked into the school shortly before dismissal time, pulled a fire alarm, and began shooting as students and teachers streamed out of classrooms into the halls.
The suspect was armed with an AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifle and numerous ammunition cartridges. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Cruz legally purchased the weapon.
Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and made a brief initial court appearance on Thursday, in which he was ordered to be held without bond. He spoke only two words – "Yes ma'am" – when the judge asked him to confirm his name.
Cruz's court-appointed lawyer said her client had expressed remorse for his crimes.
"He's a broken human being," public defender Melissa McNeill told reporters.
