The stillness felt eerie on Friday exterior Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Roads have been closed. News crews waited throughout the road. A police helicopter thrummed overhead.

Everyone current — and all the encircling neighbors — knew what was about to occur. At midday, it started. Two loud sounds. Pop, pop!

Gunfire. The uncommon re-enactment of a lethal mass taking pictures was underway.

More than 5 years after a former scholar killed 17 individuals and injured 17 others at Stoneman Douglas High on Feb. 14, 2018, ballistics consultants and technicians have been reconstructing the bloodbath, gunshot by gunshot. The sounds have been recorded for doable use in a civil trial in opposition to a former sheriff’s deputy who didn’t rush into the constructing because the taking pictures unfolded.

In a separate legal trial in June, a jury acquitted the deputy, Scot Peterson, who was the useful resource officer assigned to the varsity that day, of kid neglect and different expenses. But a survivor and the households of 4 victims are in search of to carry him accountable for not doing extra to attempt to cease the gunman.

Last month, the choose overseeing that case, Carol-Lisa Phillips of the Broward County Circuit Court, ruled that the plaintiffs may pay for a re-enactment of the taking pictures, although whether or not any video or audio recordings will probably be admissible in court docket has but to be litigated.

Initially, the re-enactment was presupposed to happen with an assault-style rifle loaded with clean rounds. But blanks sound a lot completely different from actual gunfire, so the choose dominated that dwell ammunition may very well be used, together with a security system to catch the bullets. Parkland officers warned residents that gunfire could be heard as much as a mile away and will proceed into the night hours.

In a rustic that for years has skilled a seemingly never-ending cycle of mass violence, the re-enactment was a brand new and troublesome chapter that pressured the scarred Parkland group to relive a few of its trauma. (The gunman was spared the death penalty by a jury final yr and as a substitute sentenced to life in jail.)

Mr. Peterson’s protection argued within the legal trial that he heard only some photographs when he was standing close to the big 1200 constructing, although about 70 have been fired throughout that point, and that he couldn’t make sure whether or not the photographs have been coming from contained in the constructing or elsewhere due to how they echoed. His lawyer within the civil case didn’t reply to a request for touch upon Friday.

“We believe that it will show that there’s no possible way that Scot Peterson didn’t hear the 70 rounds from an AR-15 when he was just feet away from that building,” mentioned Max Schachter, one of many plaintiffs, whose 14-year-old son, Alex, was killed.

Also killed within the taking pictures have been Alyssa Alhadeff, 14; Scott Beigel, 35; Martin Duque, 14; Nicholas Dworet, 17; Aaron Feis, 37; Jaime Guttenberg, 14; Christopher Hixon, 49; Luke Hoyer, 15; Cara Loughran, 14; Gina Montalto, 14; Joaquin Oliver, 17; Alaina Petty, 14; Meadow Pollack, 18; Helena Ramsay, 17; Carmen Schentrup, 16; and Peter Wang, 15.

Their households backed the re-enactment request from the plaintiffs.

This being Parkland, an prosperous and liberal group that birthed a nationwide youth motion in opposition to gun violence within the speedy aftermath of the 2018 taking pictures, Friday additionally grew to become a chance to push for stronger federal regulation over faculty security, psychological well being and weapons.

Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Parkland Democrat who graduated from Stoneman Douglas High in 1999, and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, led a bipartisan, nine-member delegation from Congress to stroll by way of the varsity within the hours earlier than the re-enactment. Some households joined them, as did the Democratic state legal professional, Harold F. Pryor, and the chief prosecutor within the legal case in opposition to Mr. Peterson. The prosecutors gave the lawmakers a minute-by-minute breakdown of how the taking pictures unfolded over lower than seven minutes on Valentine’s Day in 2018.

Afterward, the lawmakers, households and prosecutors held a virtually two-hour closed-door assembly to debate potential laws. They shared few specifics however mentioned strolling collectively by way of the constructing — a “time capsule” of just about precisely the way it appeared instantly after the taking pictures, as Mr. Moskowitz put it — was a strong bonding expertise.

“To tell you the truth, I was kind of dreading this moment,” Mr. Diaz-Balart instructed reporters, his voice catching from emotion. “But I’m glad I was here.”

The constructing the place the taking pictures occurred, which has been fenced and closed because the bloodbath, has been slated for demolition. But the varsity district has mentioned that won’t occur earlier than the varsity yr begins within the subsequent couple of weeks. Mr. Moskowitz mentioned he would invite extra lawmakers to see the constructing’s bullet-pocked partitions and bloodstained flooring within the meantime.

“There’s value in giving it a little bit more time to bring decision-makers through that building,” he mentioned.