An English teacher who was wounded in the Parkland shooting reacted to the jury giving the gunman a life sentence. NBC 6’s Kim Wynne reports
When the Parkland shooter was given a life sentence and not the death penalty, Stacey Lippel was so upset that she started shaking.
"It doesn’t make any sense to me," Lippel said. "It doesn’t make sense that this did not come out as the death penalty."
Lippel, an English teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was shot in the arm during the 2018 massacre while trying to protect her students and get them inside a classroom.
"He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air we’re breathing," she said.
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Lippel said physically, she’s OK and her arm has healed — but the mental scars have not gone away.
"I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for almost five years and I was so excited when I found out that there was a verdict this quickly, because I thought, 'This is it. This is the just reward. This is going to be the sense of finality that we were all seeking,' and it just ended so flat," she said. "I just put my head down, and I was shaking."
Like many of the parents who spoke out, she feels justice was not served and that the killer doesn’t deserve to live.
"I don’t understand. What are you thinking?" Lippel said. "If not this as the case for the death penalty, then what? Why do we have the death penalty in the state then?
Lippel says she plans to show up for the shooter's sentencing on Nov. 1, where she plans to give a victim impact statement.
