Parkland Survivor Sam Fuentes 'Reclaims Her Power' in New Documentary

The new documentary short 'Death by Numbers' shows Fuentes' emotional journey in the run-up to the day she came face to face with the shooter in court

Courtesy of Death By Numbers documentary, Kim A Snyder, 2024

Sam Fuentes remembers laying on the floor of her classroom in Parkland, Fla., bleeding profusely, with “two dead kids next to me,” she says in the new documentary, Death by Numbers.

Fuentes had been shot in the thigh by the 19-year-old gunman who opened fire with an AR-15 on Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where she was a senior.

In a powerful victim impact statement just before the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in Nov. 2022, Fuentes bravely faced him in court, telling him, “I was still a child when I saw you standing in the window, peering into my Holocaust Studies class, holding your AR-15 that had swastikas, ironically, scratched into it.

“I was still a child when I saw you kill two of my friends. You shot me in my leg and if you looked me in the face, you would see the scars from hard shrapnel that was latched into it.”

Courtesy of Death By Numbers documentary, Kim A Snyder, 2024

Staring straight at Cruz, who killed 14 students and 3 adults and wounded 17 others, including Fuentes, she said, “Without your stupid gun, you are nothing.”

The victim impact statement Fuentes, now 24, delivered that day is the centerpiece of the new documentary short, Death by Numbers. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

Directed by Peabody Award-winning director Kim A. Snyder and written by Fuentes, the 33-minute short shows her emotional journey in the run-up to the day she confronted her shooter in court.

“Interweaving Sam’s evocative poetry and her shooter’s harrowing sentencing trial that will determine whether he lives or dies, we follow Sam’s journey to reclaim her power,” a release for the film states.

She and her teacher Ivy Schamis “examine complex questions of collective hate and what restorative justice looks like for the victims involved.”

Cruz pleaded guilty in Oct. 2021 to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. His sentencing trial began in July 2022, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty and defense attorneys asking for life in prison.

In Oct. 2022, a jury rejected the death penalty and sentenced Cruz to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On Nov. 2, 2022, two days after Fuentes and others delivered their victim statements, a judge formally sentenced Cruz to life without parole.

In an email to PEOPLE, Fuentes said that before she stepped into the courtroom to face Cruz, she felt “nervous and nauseous but I had a deep sense that this needed to happen which kept me rooted.

“I felt I needed to be composed and keep my anger at minimum which was a real concern for me, ultimately because I didn’t want my shooter to think I was still afraid of him or he had any control over me, that his reign of terror ended. I needed him to know that I saw him for what he really was: a hateful bigot.”

She wrote that she wished the shooter had died, sparing everyone from a trial, which “re-traumatized” an “entire community including myself.”

Courtesy of Death By Numbers documentary, Kim A Snyder, 2024

The sentence, she wrote, “devastated me, I wailed like a child in a separate room afterwards.”

But she added, “The sentence doesn’t erase what has happened and isn't the ultimate form of closure.”

In an email to PEOPLE, Snyder said she hopes the film will “break through the inevitable numbness that we all feel as we become inured to gun violence.”

She added, “Sam’s ultimate story of empowerment in bravely facing and confronting her shooter is profoundly inspiring to me personally and fortifies my resolve to remain committed to advocating for gun violence prevention.”

As a filmmaker, she says, "We intentionally do not name the shooter. This is in alignment with the No Notoriety movement and an important decision in the film."

Death by Numbers is being screened at film festivals around the country, including at the prestigious Woodstock Film Festival on Sat., Oct. 19.