Nikolas Cruz, 19, had moved into a friend’s family home in Parkland around Thanksgiving after his adoptive mother Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia on November 1
The family who the suspected Florida high gunman had been living with say they were ‘horrified’ to learn he had shot dead 17 people in the shooting massacre.
Nikolas Cruz, 19, had moved into a friend’s family home in Parkland around Thanksgiving after his adoptive mother Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia on November 1.
Police and FBI officials started searching the home just a few hours after Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday armed with an assault rifle and slaughtered 17 people.
Jim Lewis, a lawyer representing the unidentified family, said they were devastated and shocked.
‘They had no idea that this kid was capable of this,’ Lewis told the Palm Beach Post.
‘They were just trying to give him a place to live, and now the world has gone crazy.’
They knew that Cruz owned the AR-15 but made him keep it locked up in a cabinet and never saw him go to a shooting range with it. He did have the key, however.
Cruz faced court briefly on Thursday as he was officially charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over the high school shooting massacre
Officers recovered the Ar-15 (pictured Wednesday) as well as the vest he dumped. The family he was living with knew that Cruz owned the AR-15 but made him keep it locked up in a cabinet
Cruz passed a background check and legally purchased the semi-automatic rifle from a dealer in Florida in February 2017.
During the three months Cruz lived there, he was respectful and quiet but also sad over his mother’s death, Lewis said.
‘No indication that anything severe like this was wrong,’ Lewis told AP. ‘Just a mildly troubled kid who’d lost his mom. He totally kept this from everybody.
‘The mother said if they had any suspicious that he was violent, was capable of anything like this, he would have never stepped foot in her house.’
Cruz was supposed to go to GED classes on the morning of the shooting, but when his friend’s father woke him up to drop him off on his way to work, the teen said something to the effect of: ‘It’s Valentine’s Day. I don’t go to school on Valentine’s Day,’ according to the lawyer.
‘They just blew it off,’ Lewis said. ‘This is some 19-year-old that didn’t want to get up and go to school that day, and (they) left it at that.’
Cruz was taken into custody without issue after around an hour of eluding police. He stormed into the high school at about 2pm on Wednesday and opened fire
Cruz was an orphan – his mother, Lynda Cruz, died of pneumonia November 1, and her husband died of a heart attack years ago. Nikolas and Lynda are both pictured above
Cruz had moved in with the family after briefly living for a few weeks at Lantana Cascade mobile-home neighborhood with another family friend.
That mobile home was also raided by authorities following the shooting.
Despite the family saying they saw no indication, the troubled teen had already begun showing what may have been warning signs he was bent on violence.
The 19-year-old got expelled last year from the high school for undisclosed disciplinary reasons.
As investigators tried to establish the motive for Wednesday’s shooting rampage, students and neighbors portrayed Cruz as an often strange and hostile figure who threatened others, talked about killing animals, and posed with guns in disturbing photos on social media.
Benjamin Bennight, a Mississippi bail bondsman, was concerned enough after seeing the ‘professional school shooter’ comment on his Youtube channel that he took a screenshot of it on his phone and called the FBI.
Two FBI agents visited Bennight the next day, but authorities said they never spoke to the Florida teen.
Cruz had moved in with the family after briefly living for a few weeks at Lantana Cascade mobile-home neighborhood with another family friend. That mobile home (pictured above) was also raided by authorities following the shooting.
‘No other information was included in the comment which would indicate a particular time, location or the true identity of the person who posted the comment,’ said Brett Carr, a spokesman for the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi.
‘The FBI conducted database reviews and other checks but was unable to further identify the person who posted the comment.’
Math teacher Jim Gard told The Miami Herald that Cruz may have been seen as a potential threat well before the rampage. Gard said he believes the school had sent out an email warning teachers that Cruz shouldn’t be allowed on campus with a backpack.
‘There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus,’ Gard told the newspaper.
Cruz was getting treatment at a mental health clinic for a while but hadn’t been there for more than a year, Broward County Mayor Beam Furr told CNN.
Cruz’s attorney, Melisa McNeill, said after a court hearing Thursday on the murder charges against the young man that Cruz was sad and remorseful and ‘just a broken human being.’
‘When you don’t have the support system, that affects who you are, and that affects the people around you,’ McNeill said.
‘And when your brain is not fully developed you don’t know how to deal with these things.’