Students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reported hearing "what sounded like gunfire" shortly before the end of the school day on Wednesday.
The gunman entered the school premises - about an hour north of Miami - and set off a fire alarm so people would begin leaving their classrooms.
Many students thought it was a drill because a fire alarm practice had taken place earlier that day, but then heard the sound of shooting.
"I heard about six gunshots and then some people started running," Student Jeiella Dodoo told CBS News. "And then everyone started running because we were like, 'If it's real, then just run.'
The gunman, firing multiple times at students and teachers, killed three people outside the school, before entering one of the school's teaching buildings and killing another 12, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. Two others died of their injuries in local hospitals.
Witnesses described how students hid under desks, in closets or barricaded doors as the shots rang out in the building, which houses 30 classrooms.
Police and Swat team members swarmed the campus and began clearing students from the school. Parents and ambulances also converged on the scene.
Students were led off the campus by heavily armed police officers.
The gunman, concealing himself in the crowd, was among the hundreds of people fleeing the building.
Nikolas Cruz, who had been expelled for "disciplinary reasons", was captured by police in the nearby town of Coral Springs, just a few miles from the school, about an hour after the attack.
He was taken to a nearby hospital before being released into police custody.
Source: BBC.com
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