Shaken but unbowed, Florida survivors recount horrific stories as they lobby for change

“The door started to rattle and the thought that came to my mind was that I was going to die.”

Untold stories from the high school shooting in Florida a week ago came tumbling out, alongside the anger their horrific experiences had fuelled, as students came to their state capital to lobby for change on Wednesday.

Lorenzo Prado, 17, wept as he told how he had at first been mistaken for the shooter during the rampage that killed 14 of his fellow students and three teachers, including his sports coach.

“The Swat team came in and I thought they were here to rescue me ... but I find I am wrong. They told me to put my hands over my head ... and when I went out the doors I had six Swat pointing their guns at me,” he continued.

Prado said he had felt enormous fear but also guilt. “Guilt that I hadn’t called my mother. Guilt that the Swat team were pursuing me when they should have been following the shooter. And guilt for Mr Hixon whose life I thought I had saved when I let those folks in [to the building where he was hiding] but he lost it when he went out again,” he said.

Prado choked up again as he referred to Chris Hixon, the 49-year-old athletic director and wrestling coach who was among those killed by suspected gunman Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, last Wednesday.

Prado said he resembled Cruz somewhat and so had been tossed on the ground, handcuffed and held under guard at gunpoint until the actual shooter was captured.

Raising his voice at a podium in Tallahassee where he had come to protest legislative inaction on gun control with around 100 of his fellow students, Prado said that today he felt a little less traumatized.

“I’m not guilty any more because I’m here to call for change in this country. We will get change, if not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow then after that, if I have to drop everything else in my life just to make it happen,” he said.

They came up to the podium before and after him, one by one, fresh from funerals of classmates the day before in Parkland, and fresh from disappointment the evening before when the state legislature summarily refused even to consider a bill to ban the kind of rapid-fire assault rifle used in the massacre.

The young survivors of the worst high school shooting in US history were unbowed yet clearly still shaken as they spoke between meetings with small groups of lawmakers.

“The way people today have greeted us, or not greeted us, means we aren’t being taken seriously enough,” said Alphonso Calderon, 16.

“We’re old enough to understand why a senator cares about re-election or not, we’re old enough to understand why someone might want to discredit us for their own political purposes,” he added, referring to attacks on the students by the rightwing media.

A wave of campaigns has been set off by the Parkland event that has spread quickly to schools in many other states and to the gates of the White House, where Donald Trump announced token new gun measures on Tuesday.

Ryan Deitsch, a senior, said he had received little encouragement from the legislators he had seen.

“I’m 18 now, my friends are turning 18 soon. I can vote and I know who I’m not voting for, these people I’ve been meeting … none of them have put into words what needs to be done,” he said.

Delaney Tarr said she was speaking off the cuff to prove she was no “crisis actor” with a speech somebody else might have prepared for her – in the wake of conspiracy theorists posting on social media and twisting facts about the shooting, leading to one political aide being fired.

“Speaking from the heart is what we do best. It’s based in passion and it’s based in pain,” she said.

She also spoke of frustration with the lack of measurable progress from their visit to the halls of power.

“We’ve been to many rooms, spoken to legislators, but try as they might, the most we’ve gotten out of them is: ‘We’ll keep you in our thoughts, you’re so strong, you’re so powerful.’ We’ve heard enough of that. We’re not here to be patted on the back. We’re doing it so our legislators will make a change, so they won’t dismiss us any longer. We’ve had enough of thoughts and prayers.”