Owner Robert Kraft flies students to protest on Patriots team plane
There are plenty of New England Patriots haters around the country.
But suffice it to say, the team has won over a large group of new fans in South Florida.
Some of the students who were injured in last month’s fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as well as family members of the 17 people killed in the tragedy, made their way to the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C. this weekend with a big assist from Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Kraft provided the team’s private 767 wide-body jet to take them from Fort Lauderdale to Washington, and then back home.
Kraft did not make the trip with the students.
Patriots spokesperson Stacey James told The Boston Globe that Kraft decided to lend the plane to those affected by the shooting after former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, reached out to him and asked for the favor.
NEW: Robert Kraft sent @Patriots official team plane to fly families and students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from Florida to Washington D.C. for the #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/QhA0jjtemO
— WBZ | CBS News Boston (@wbz) March 23, 2018
Giffords, a former congresswoman from Arizona, was shot in the head at a political rally in Tucson in 2011. Six died in the shooting, though Giffords was among the survivors.
“Not only did their friends and teachers get shot and killed, other friends shot and injured … most of them, they had bullets flying over their heads,” Kelly told The Washington Post this week regarding the Parkland shooting. “This is not fair that they have to deal with something like this at their age.”
https://twitter.com/kali4change/status/977023722157723649
The plane took off from Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, James said, and will bring the students and families back to Florida following the march.
Organizers are expecting around 500,000 participants in the March for Our Lives event in Washington, which will protest gun violence and call on the federal government to pass new gun-control measures.
Similar demonstrations also will take place Saturday in hundreds of cities around the country.
“Experiencing that sort of loss — in an environment where people expect to be safe — is one of the most traumatizing memories a child can have,” Nikki Nookala, a student who survived the Parkland shooting, wrote in an Op-Ed for the BBC.
According to the event’s website, “On March 24, the kids and families of March For Our Lives will take to the streets of Washington DC to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today.”
The man arrested for the Parkland shooting, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, was identified by witnesses and arrested shortly after the incident. Cruz, who had been expelled from the school, confessed to the crime, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
He was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 attempted murders. Police and prosecutors have not yet offered a motive and are investigating “a pattern of disciplinary issues and unnerving behavior.”
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