Cruz Shooter Make America Great Again Fact or Fiction
Suspect Confessed to Police That He Began Shooting Students 'in the Hallways'
For the latest news in the wake of the Florida school shooting, read Thursday'southward coverage .
PARKLAND, Fla. — The suspect in 1 of the deadliest school shootings in mod American history confessed to the police that he "began shooting students that he saw in the hallways and on schoolhouse grounds," according to a police arrest report released Thursday.
The doubtable, Nikolas Cruz, 19, carried a black duffel bag and backpack, where he hid loaded magazines, the written report said. He arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in an Uber at 2:19 p.m. on Wednesday and pulled out a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle, according to details described by the authorities at a news conference on Thursday.
Mr. Cruz also shot people inside five classrooms on the first and second floors of the freshman building. He eventually discarded the rifle, a vest and ammunition in a stairwell, blended in with fleeing students and got abroad, the authorities said.
After leaving the schoolhouse, Mr. Cruz walked to a Walmart, and bought a beverage at a Subway. He also stopped at a McDonald's. He was arrested by the police without incident as he walked downwardly a residential street at three:41 p.g.
"He looked like a typical high school student, and for a quick moment I thought, could this exist the person who I demand to stop?" said Officer Michael Leonard.
Here are the takeaways:
• Mr. Cruz faces 17 counts of premeditated murder — 1 for each of the people he is accused of killing on Wed in a shooting that was captured on cellphone video by terrified students. He is beingness held without bond at the main Broward Canton jail, where he has been placed on suicide watch, co-ordinate to Gordon Weekes, the county's chief assistant public defender.
• The AR-15 rifle used in the attack was purchased legally, at Sunrise Tactical Supply in Florida, according to a federal law enforcement official. The arrest report said Mr. Cruz purchased it in February 2017. "No laws were violated in the procurement of this weapon," said Peter J. Forcelli, the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Miami.
• The F.B.I. said on Thursday it received information final year about a comment made on a YouTube channel which has been attributed to the gunman, but was unable to identify the person.
• In Florida, an AR-15 is easier to buy than a handgun. Read more on how the AR-15 became one of the weapons of choice for mass killers, and the research that tries to explain the high rate of mass shootings in the U.s.a..
• With this shooting, three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern United States history take come up in the terminal five months. Here is a graphic that records the grim price of schoolhouse shootings beyond the nation.
• A huge crowd gathered at Pine Trails Park in Parkland for an emotional acuity to commemorate the victims, fourteen of whom were students. Read more than about the victims hither. The football team gathered separately nearby, forming a circle and locking hands before praying for a coach and an athletic managing director who were killed.
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The victims — 14 students and three faculty — ranged from 14 years old to 49.
Among them was a popular football coach and a geography instructor credited with saving a boy's life when he stood in front end of a classroom door.
The coach, Aaron Feis, was seen as someone who looked out for students who got in trouble, those who were struggling, those without fathers at home. "He'd go out of his way to assist anybody," said Mr. Feis's grandpa, Raymond. Read more about the victims here.
Mr. Cruz made his first court appearance, clad in an orange jail jumpsuit.
Shackled around his hands, feet and waist, Mr. Cruz was asked if he understood the circumstances. "Yes, ma'am," he whispered.
"He's sad. He's mournful," his public defender, Melisa McNeill, said afterwards. "He is fully aware of what is going on, and he'due south just a broken human beingness."
Mr. Weekes, the chief assistant public defender, said the lawyers were still trying to slice together the details of Mr. Cruz's life. Mr. Cruz has a "significant" history of mental illness, according to Mr. Weekes, and is perhaps autistic or has a learning disability.
But Mr. Weekes was not notwithstanding ready to say whether he would pursue a mental health defense force.
Howard Finkelstein, the primary public defender in Broward County, said the case will nowadays a difficult question: Should social club execute mentally ill people?
"There'due south no question of whether he volition exist convicted of majuscule murder 17 times," he said. "When we let one of our children fall off grid, when they are screaming for help in every way, do nosotros have the right to kill them when we could accept stopped it?"
Since his mother'due south death last twelvemonth, Mr. Cruz was living with another family unit, said their attorney.
The family that took him in, the Sneads, had seen signs of low in Mr. Cruz, but aught indicated that he was capable of this kind of violence, Jim Lewis, the family unit'southward attorney, said. The family had allowed Mr. Cruz to bring his gun with him to their house, insisting that he keep it in a lockbox.
Mr. Lewis had encouraged Mr. Cruz to attend adult education courses, work toward his G.Due east.D., and take a task at a local Dollar Tree store, he said in a brief interview. The Sneads' son, a inferior, knew Mr. Cruz from Stoneman Douglas High.
On Midweek, Mr. Cruz and the Sneads' son were texting until 2:18 p.thou., Mr. Lewis said — most five minutes before the kickoff 911 calls most the shooting. "Just there was nothing crazy in the texts," Mr. Lewis said. Here is our profile on Mr. Cruz.
Gino Santorio, executive vice president and primary operating officer of Broward Health, said the hospital where Mr. Cruz was taken, Broward Health Northward, enacted safety protocols when he arrived on Wednesday.
The staff treated the doubtable "like every patient they treat," Mr. Santorio said.
"We were able to seclude the patient, treat and get them out without any bug," he added.
Broward Health North received nine patients, including the suspect, according to Kelly Keys, manager of emergency preparedness for the health system. Ii patients died, three remain at the hospital, and three have gone habitation.
The schoolhouse customs urged activeness from lawmakers, including tougher gun legislation: 'We need change.'
Students and parents in Parkland, an affluent suburb in Florida's most intensely Democratic canton, said a focus from policymakers on treating mental disease was non enough.
Lori Alhadeff, whose girl Alyssa, 14, was killed, made an emotional plea for action.
"President Trump, nosotros need action, nosotros demand change," she said, the urgency rising in her vocalization. "Get these guns out of the hands of these young kids and become these guns off the streets."
"If nosotros're constantly having our children worried about getting shot at, what are we telling our future?" said David Hogg, 17, a senior, who said two of his xiv-twelvemonth-one-time sister's friends were killed. "And that's what these people are killing, our future."
Superintendent Runcie did not mince words: "Now is the time for the state to have a real conversation on sensible gun controls in this country," he said.
Democrats in Congress welcomed a gun control contend. "At some signal, we've got to say plenty is enough," Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said on the Senate floor.
But in an interview on WIBC radio on Thursday, Firm Speaker Paul Ryan said that public policymakers "shouldn't just genu-jerk before we fifty-fifty take all the facts and the data." He added, "We need to think less well-nigh taking sides and fighting each other politically, and just pulling together."
In an address to the nation, President Trump appear he would visit Parkland and piece of work with the nation's governors "to aid secure our schools, and tackle the difficult issue of mental health." But he made no mention of guns.
The F.B.I. had information nigh a suspicious comment on YouTube.
Ben Bennight, a bond bondsman in Mississippi, said in an interview that he reported a suspicious annotate left on his YouTube aqueduct final fall by a user named "nikolas cruz."
"I'm going to exist a professional school shooter," the Sept. 24 annotate said.
Mr. Bennight took a screenshot of the annotate and flagged it to YouTube, which removed the post. Mr. Bennight said he then left a voice mail message at his local F.B.I. field office alerting it to the comment.
Mr. Bennight, 36, said that when he originally reported the comments to the F.B.I., a pair of agents interviewed him the adjacent forenoon. Mr. Bennight said two F.B.I. agents visited him a few hours afterward the shooting on Wednesday, spending well-nigh 15 to twenty minutes with him. The agents told him they thought the person who posted on his channel might be connected to the Florida shooting because they had the same proper name.
The F.B.I. on Th released a statement that said information technology received information near a comment made on a YouTube channel in September 2017. "No other information was included in the comment which would indicate a particular fourth dimension, location, or the true identity of the person who posted the comment," the argument said. The F.B.I. said it conducted database reviews and other checks, only was unable to further place the person who posted the comment.
On Thursday, Jordan Jereb, a leader of a white supremacist group based in North Florida, told The Associated Printing that Mr. Cruz had joined the group, only subsequently Mr. Jereb said that he did not know whether that was true. Sheriff State of israel said he could not confirm any ties Mr. Cruz might have had to white nationalists.
The suspect's Instagram accounts showed guns and hinted at brute cruelty.
Ii Instagram accounts that classmates said belonged to Mr. Cruz were filled with images of weaponry, as well as the hats and bandannas he liked to wearable to school. Among more than innocuous pictures of animals, including a dog and a gecko, was a picture of a slaughtered toad. In response to a comment on that image, Mr. Cruz wrote that toads tended to run away when they saw him, considering "I killed a lot of them."
Other posts on the showtime account, like one captioned "arsenal," showcased collections of firearms, including what appears to exist a Savage Axis bolt-action burglarize, a Smith and Wesson M&P15-series rifle, and at least two shotguns.
Information technology was unclear whether the profile picture for that business relationship, a face up nearly entirely covered with a "Make America Not bad Once more" hat and large bandanna, was an prototype of Mr. Cruz.
The profile picture for the second account as well featured a face almost fully covered, this time with an Regular army beanie. The business relationship included several pictures of a figure wearing several different Army hats and conveying guns and knives. It also contained a film of a Google search for the Arabic phrase "Allahu akbar" — God is swell.
Instagram did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
'The shots were something I'll never forget'
Moises Lobaton, a senior, was in psychology class when gunfire boomed. The students scurried to try to hide equally far away from the door as possible.
"There wasn't enough space behind the desk, so non all of the kids could fit," he said.
Shots shattered a glass window on the door, injuring at to the lowest degree three of his classmates, including a daughter who "wasn't moving at all."
"She was next to a pool of blood, merely I couldn't tell if information technology was hers or the guy next to hers," he said. The boy had been shot in the arm and was bleeding profusely. His classmates wrapped the arm in cloth. Another boy chosen 911.
"The shots were something I'll never forget. It sounded similar bombs going off, one at a time," he said. "If I was ane or ii feet to the right, I would have died."
In New York, two students were arrested afterwards threatening on social media to 'gun down' their Brooklyn loftier school, police said.
Cole Carlberg, 16, turned himself in, and the police picked upwards Joshua Schechter, 16, later receiving a 911 phone call at about nine a.m. on Thursday. Both were charged with making terroristic threats, aggravated harassment and criminal possession of a weapon, a New York constabulary sergeant, Brendan Ryan, said.
On Wed, the teenagers had posted on Snapchat that they had planned to shoot up Brooklyn Prospect Charter School on Fort Hamilton Parkway, Sergeant Ryan said, calculation that the school contacted parents about the threat. One of the teenagers had an "air pistol rifle" that Sergeant Ryan described equally a pellet or BB gun, merely said it was unclear who owned information technology. "That's still under investigation," he said.
Mr. Carlberg and Mr. Schechter remained in custody on Thursday night, Sergeant Ryan said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-shooting.html
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