An Instagram account apparently belonging to Florida shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz was dominated by disturbing images of a young man with a fascination for deadly weapons.
One image of a bullet-pocked target is labelled “Group therapy—sometimes it works.” Others show a masked figure brandished a handgun and hunting knives.
Before a mass shooting erupted at Cruz’s former high school on Wednesday, most classmates thought of the 19-year-old as no more than “creepy and weird.”
Before 6AM on Thursday, he was formally booked into Broward County jail charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.
The teens who knew Cruz at the school were stunned. They described Cruz as an awkward “outcast”—someone who had trouble fitting in at Douglas High. But they never saw a mass murderer in the making. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″]We’re now beginning to hear the stories of escape, fear and heroism from Wednesday’s Florida high school shooting.
Of the 17 people who were killed in the incident, one teacher reportedly died while trying to save his students.
A student named Alex told WSVN-TV her teacher ran to the door to open it so students could escape, and as he was trying to help them to safety, he was killed in front of her – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″]Last fall, a Mississippi bail bondsman and frequent YouTube vlogger noticed an alarming comment left on one of his videos. “I’m going to be a professional school shooter,” said a user named Nikolas Cruz.
The YouTuber, 36-year-old Ben Bennight, alerted the FBI, emailing a screenshot of the comment to the bureau’s tips account. He also flagged the comment to YouTube, which removed it from the video.
Agents with the bureau’s Mississippi field office got back to him “immediately,” Bennight said, and conducted an in-person interview the following day, on Sept. 25.
“They came to my office the next morning and asked me if I knew anything about the person,” Bennight told BuzzFeed News. “I didn’t. They took a copy of the screenshot and that was the last I heard from them.”
FBI agents contacted Bennight again Wednesday, after a 19-year-old named Nikolas Cruz allegedly opened fire at a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in south Florida, killing at least 17 people.
In the wake of the deadly shooting, questions have emerged over whether officials and acquaintances had missed warning signs about the alleged shooter, a former student who was expelled from the high school last year for disciplinary reasons. – READ MORE