One of the teachers killed in last week's mass shooting at a Florida high school once told his fiancée what to say at his funeral if he ever was killed in a school shooting, the New York Post reported.
Scott Beigel, who was watching coverage of a school shooting on television with his fiancée, said her “Promise me if this ever happens to me, you will tell them the truth — tell them what a jerk I am, don’t talk about the hero stuff,” Gwen Gossler said during Beigel’s funeral at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton.
“OK, Scott, I did what you asked,’’ Gossler said during Beigel’s funeral service, the Post reported. “Now I can tell the truth. You are an amazingly special person. You are my first love and my soulmate.’’
Beigel, 35, a geography teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, was one of 17 people killed when a gunman opened fire at the South Florida school on Valentine’s Day. Beigel had unlocked his classroom to allow students to enter and was killed when he tried to lock the door again, the Post reported.
Stoneman Douglas student Kelsey Friend told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Beigel saved her life.
“He unlocked the door and let us in,” Friend said. “I had thought he was behind me, but he wasn’t. When he opened the door, he had to relock it so we could stay safe, but he didn’t get the chance to.
“He was in the doorway and the door was still open and the shooter probably didn’t know we were in there because he was lying on the floor. If the shooter had come in the room, I probably wouldn’t be (alive).”
Beigel was born in Dix Hills, New York, and attended the University of Miami, according to his obituary. He also coached the Stoneman Douglas cross-country team and was a counselor at Camp Starlight in Pennsylvania. A post on a Facebook page for the camp called him a "friend and hero."
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