Police say an Uber car dropped off Nikolas Cruz at his former school around 2:19 p.m. on Wednesday.
Within 10 minutes, authorities say he gunned down 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and left campus undetected in a crowd of students.
Now, as the 19-year-old gunman begins his journey through the criminal justice system, a community is in mourning and investigators are looking for answers.
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Posts under videos on YouTube and other sites by someone using the name Nikolas Cruz include threatening comments, such as:
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A former neighbor said Cruz pointed a BB gun at homes and did target practice in the neighborhood. In video the former neighbor shared with CNN, Cruz is on a back patio, wearing only boxers and a red baseball cap, brandishing a pistol that appears to be a type of BB gun called an airsoft pistol.
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Cruz purchased the firearm used in the shooting, an AR-15 style rifle, legally in the state of Florida nearly a year ago, according Peter J. Forcelli, special agent in charge of the Miami field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
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‘Nobody saw this kind of aggression’ Cruz had been expelled from the high school over disciplinary problems, Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said, without providing specifics. The school is closed for the rest of the week, as the district offers grief counseling to students and their families. Cruz was adopted. His adoptive mother, Lynda Cruz, died in November of pneumonia. Kathie Blaine, a cousin of Cruz’s adoptive mother, said his adoptive father passed away years ago.
Broward Sheriff’s deputies were called to the Cruz family home 39 times since 2010, according to documents obtained by CNN. The sheriff’s office received a range of emergency calls that included: “mentally ill person,” “child/elderly abuse,” “domestic disturbance,” “missing person.” Details of those calls are not immediately available; most of them are marked “no written report,” so it’s impossible to know if they involved Nikolas Cruz.
After Lynda Cruz’s death, the family of someone Cruz met at the high school let him stay in their home, said Jim Lewis, attorney for the host family.
That family knew he had a gun, Lewis said. “They had it locked up, and believed that that was going to be sufficient, that there wasn’t going to be a problem.”
Asked if the family had seen troubling signs, Lewis said they “saw some depression” over his adoptive mother’s death.
“Obviously, he’d lost his mom. But they helped him get a job at a Dollar Tree store. They got him going to an adult education so he could try to get his GED and he seemed to be doing better,” Lewis said.
The family was unaware of any mental illness beyond depression, Lewis said.
Big time fail all the way around. Florida even has a “protocol” for LE and Mental health practitioners to have folks with apparent mental issues involuntarily examined, see “Baker Act”. Shooter may have even had a voluntary exam if approached appropriately. Never know now.