Parkland shooting families reach multimillion–dollar settlement

Parents of students killed in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting sued the FBI for not investigating a tip that gunman Nikolas Cruz was planning an attack. Attorneys for 16 of the 17 families of students who died, along with some wounded, announced Monday that they reached a confidential settlement with the federal government. The family of the 17th victim at the Florida school didn’t join the lawsuit.

What do we know about the agreement? A person who requested anonymity but who is familiar with the settlement said the government will pay a total of $127.5 million. Someone had called the FBI tip line more than a month before the Valentine’s Day shooting saying Nikolas Cruz, who had been expelled from Stoneman Douglas the year before, had purchased firearms and intended to “slip into a school and start shooting the place up.” The agency did not send the information to the local FBI office or contact Cruz. The 23-year-old pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder in October.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Laura Edghill’s report in Schooled about the security breakdown at the high school leading up to the massacre.