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Andrew Pollack looks back one year after Parkland shooting, remembers daughter Meadow as a fighter

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Posted at 12:53 PM, Feb 13, 2019
and last updated 2019-02-14 23:29:40-05

One of the better known Parkland parents is Andrew Pollack.

You might remember him from a meeting at the White House shortly after the attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where his daughter Meadow was killed. He stood up and with microphone in hand, told President Trump, "It's my daughter I'm not going to see again."

He is at the forefront of the group of parents who lost a child and responded by turning their anger into action. I caught up with him at his camper, where he now lives with his wife and dog after selling their home.

"I choose to live in a county that is less toxic than Broward," he said.

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His temporary home is outside a Coral Springs Chabad, where he is friends with the rabbi.

"I can't let my daughter's death be in vain. I can't let these people just get away with what they allowed to happen to my daughter," he told me.

Meadow Pollack had big plans after high school.

"She was a fighter. She would have been at Lynn University. She wanted to be an attorney," he said.

The teenage gunman ended all those dreams. Pollack won’t speak his name.

"181958. That's his prison number."

A killer whose rampage went unchallenged that day by a Broward County sheriff's deputy - that BSO response including all the missed warning signs about the shooters highly troubled past - led to the suspension of the Sheriff Scott Israel.

"One by one, like dominoes, I'm going to take these people until they accept responsibility," Pollack said.

Pollack wants Broward School Superintendent Robert Runcie out of his job too.

"He enabled it because he created a culture of leniency throughout the school district," Pollack told me. "He took away law enforcement from the police officers at the schools and put it in the hands of the administrators."

A grieving dad fighting every day on behalf of Meadow.

"She fought to the end. The guy walked up and shot her another five times while she covered a freshman while this deputy is hiding behind a wall."

Someday Pollack will pull up stakes and leave in his camper, but don't talk about closure. There really never can be for a dad who lost his little girl.

"I went to a wedding. You know what that was like seeing my niece get married at a wedding walking down the aisle? I'll never go to a wedding again ... dancing with my brother in law ... you might as well have shot me right at the wedding."