Seven years ago, almost to the day, 17 people died in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. On February 14, 2018, another 17 were wounded, including Sam Fuentes, who was shot in the legs and injured by hot shrapnel that hit her face. She channeled the horror of that day into activism with the March for Our Lives movement, a story chronicled in a documentary called Us Kids.
Kim A. Snyder directed that film. Her latest short documentary, Death By Numbers, follows Fuentes as she continues to recover and prepares to confront the Parkland shooter face-to-face during his sentencing. It’s based on Fuentes’s diaries and narrated by her. It’s earned an Oscar nomination this year.
As part of Fuentes’ victim impact statement, she tells the shooter, “You will not be famous for this. I assure you that our people will be accounted for. They'll grow and heal despite you. You have no power anymore. You have no future. You have nothing. The people that you kill will have a legacy much more important than you. And the people who [you] nearly killed will live their lives, though with much difficulty, with a compassion and a dignity in ways you will only dream. Without your stupid gun, you are nothing. My name is Sam Fuentes, and you will not forget me. I'll never forgive or forget what you've done. And to say I won't be angry for the rest of my life will be a lie. I'll never take my anger, pain, and suffering out on others, because I am stronger than you. This entire community that stands behind me is stronger than you, and we are stronger than the hate that you give. … You will not forget us. Not until the last day that you breathe.”
Fuentes tells KCRW that she went through many drafts of the speech, driven by a sense of duty to her community. She practiced her words several times before saying them to the gunman, which helped her repress anger that otherwise would have come out in-person. The writing and rehearsal also helped process the trauma, she adds.
How did Snyder decide to base this film on Fuentes and her personal thoughts and diary entries? Snyder explains that after the making of Us Kids, she and Fuentes became closer friends and talked about the sentencing trial for the shooter, who pled guilty.
“Sam shared with me these writings, and I was so taken with the power of these words that I knew that there was a story we had not told. And I couldn't let go of it, when just the irony of her having been in an elective Holocaust studies class, and this question on the first day of class had been posed about ‘is it possible to eradicate hate from man?’ And then hate, of course, came into her classroom in a most heinous way. So we started to explore that writing. … In the end, the vision was to interweave her voice, her poetry, with the cold, cruel reality of the trial itself.”
Fuentes says she realized that no sentencing would have given her satisfaction or closure, which was why the confrontation was so important.
“So much of my own choice and my own autonomy was taken away from me, and especially with being subpoenaed, I didn't really get to choose if I wanted to be re-traumatized again, I guess. So making and asserting some kind of control was really important to me, and I think that's why the victim impact statement meant so much to me, was because the whole trial trivializes justice.”
She continues, “To even have to go into trial, and to force a community to relive this, to spend all of the money and the resources and the time to prop up this shooter, and then give him more fame and more notoriety through a lengthy trial, it doesn't serve the community. It doesn't serve the victims. It doesn't serve the people who'd lost people in this shooting. … The only thing that we could get out of it was the things that we could choose and the stand that we could make. … I don't think that the justice system and the trials are really built or adapted in such a way where they accommodate for communities like us, and so that's why it's very trivializing.”
In the documentary, when the shooter appears, an animated X sign appears over his face, except in the end when Fuentes reads her testimony. In that moment, the camera lingers on his face.
“I felt that in keeping with her journal, he should not be seen. And so there is this X’ing out. … But we decided that when she does finally have her own agency … that should be a moment where she alone can undress him in a way,” Snyder explains. “And when she stares him in the eye, we felt that that was the one time that it was personal, and that it was necessary in terms of conveying her sense of reclaiming power.”
Fuentes recalls that after the confrontation, people often told her she was brave, strong, and impressive. However, she says, “I didn't feel lucky, I didn't feel brave, I didn't feel strong. And I don't think that many people, except for those who are survivors of gun violence or atrocities like this, understand the kind of guilt and the shame that's associated with surviving things like this. … There's generally this idea that survivors are just happy to be alive and they kiss the ground they walk on. … That just simply isn't true, and survivors are often, as a result of these crimes … overlooked.”
She says that after news trucks are gone and caskets are buried, survivors disappear into obscurity and often suffer. Some even take their own lives.
“I needed it to be known that this sort of ripple effect of trauma is a continuous one. … Many years later, and I'm an adult who has a job, and I'm high functioning, and I have friends and a life, I'm still very much a mentally ill adult. … I have PTSD, and I have things that hold me down in my life that is a result of this one day that happened. And I needed that to be known, because it can be very alienating at times when people don't know what you're going through.”
Fuentes says she hopes this film will help other people who’ve survived mass shootings, so they know they’re not alone, and even when so much was taken, they still have a stance and choice, and can do what’s right.
Today, Fuentes remains an activist, collaborating with universities, sheriffs’ offices, and communities impacted by gun violence. She also plans to write more stories — including ones that have nothing to do with her personal life — and work in films.