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 A heavily armed 19-year-old who had been expelled from a South Florida high school opened fire on campus shortly before classes let out Wednesday, killing 17 people while terrified students barricaded themselves inside classrooms, police said.

The violence unfolded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, a school of more than 3,000 students in a tony suburb northwest of Fort Lauderdale where houses sit on broad lots, Washington Post reported.

The Broward County sheriff identified the suspect as Nikolas Cruz, who had recently attended the school but had been kicked out for “disciplinary reasons.” He was captured after a manhunt that transfixed the region and forced a nearby school into a lockdown, said Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel. Students recalled terror and confusion in the aftermath of the shooting.

“It’s a horrific, horrific day,” said Israel, whose own triplets graduated from the well-regarded high school. “It’s catastrophic. There really are no words.” The victims included several students and adults, authorities said.

In an English class, students were reading Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” when the shooting began, and a Code Red was declared.

“We had a fire drill early in the day, so we really didn’t know what was going on,” said Ryan Kadel, a 17-year-old senior. “We went outside, and we saw a security guard on a golf cart driving really fast and yelling at us to run.”

He and two dozen other students fled to the nearest building, piling into a large closet, where they stayed for more than 90 minutes.

“People were texting, trying to find out what was going on. Kids were crying; some people were freaking out,” Kadel said. “I’m kind of surprised it happened here, but I’m not really shocked. School shootings happen all the time, and then the news just forgets about them.”

The gunman started firing before even entering the school, leaving a trail of carnage across the sprawling campus, Israel said. A dozen of the dead were found inside the school, and three were found outside. Two others succumbed to their injuries at a hospital. A football coach was among those killed, the sheriff said Wednesday night. Twelve of the victims had been identified by late Wednesday, Israel said.

“It is a day you pray every day you don’t have to see,” said Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, reflecting on one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings. The shooter came to the school armed with weaponry that evoked a battlefield, not a school located down the street from an equestrian park. He carried “countless magazines” and an AR-15 rifle, Israel said. It was unclear if the shooter had a second weapon, the sheriff said.