The female Uber driver who drove Nikolas Cruz to Stoneman Douglas High School before he murdered 17 has spoken out for the first time about the trip.
The woman declined to give her name but told CBS Miami she picked Cruz up in Parkland at around 2pm on February 14 to drive him to the school.
She was unaware of what he had planned and thought the large backpack he was carrying was a guitar bag, she said.
The bag in fact contained the AR-15 which Cruz used to murder 17 people and injure
‘I saw him with a backpack which I thought was a guitar case. He told me, “I am going to my music class,”‘ the driver said.
Nikolas Cruz (above in court the day after the shooting) took an Uber to Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14
The female Uber driver who took him to the school spoke out on Wednesday to say he seemed like a ‘normal person’. She declined to give her name or be pictured
During the 13 minute ride, she said Cruz, 19, seemed like a ‘normal person’ and showed no signs he was planning mass murder.
‘I didn’t see anything strange or something like that,’ she said.
The first she heard of the shooting was minutes later on the news, she said.
‘I saw the news and I thought ‘Oh, I just left someone over there,’ the woman recalled.
She then received a call from Broward County Sheriff’s Deputies.
They reassured her that she was not in trouble, telling her: ‘Don’t be afraid. You have nothing to do with this,’ she said.
Days after the shooting, the woman received a call to take a passenger to one of the victim’s funerals.
She said she wept when she dropped them off and that she feels involved in the killings.
‘I made an Uber and I went to a funeral and I started to cry. I don’t know. I feel involved with all this tragedy,’ the woman said.
She was also lucky to be alive and said she had feared being shot by passengers in the past.
‘I have passengers in my car and I’m scared because anybody can have a gun,’ she said.
Police searched the Uber Cruz traveled in after the shooting but they found nothing of note.
He had calmly called it to take him there in the afternoon after refusing to go to his own school that morning.
Students returned to classes for the first time on Wednesday, two weeks after the massacre
Members of the community lined the streets surrounding the school to show students their support
There was heightened security on Wednesday as the teenagers returned to campus
Many of the students wore t-shirts with the school’s emblem on them and carried flowers
Cruz threw his gun on the ground then fled with the other students before being caught on February 14
On Wednesday, Stoneman Douglas students returned to campus for the first time since the massacre.
There was heightened security across the campus on Wednesday as the teenagers entered their classrooms.
On Tuesday, law enforcement officials revealed that Cruz had etched swastikas onto his magazines before loading his rifle.
So far no motive for the killing has been given but he was tied to a white supremacist group briefly once his name became public.
Officials cited by CBS say that on February 14, after storming the freshman building, he attempted to create a sniper’s nest on the third floor and tried to smash a window to fire down on students beneath him.
Hurricane-proof glass on the window stopped him, they said.
Eventually, Cruz stopped shooting and abandoned his gun to flee the school. He disguised himself among a crowd of fleeing students and managed to get off campus to go to McDonald’s afterwards before he was arrested.
Law enforcement officials have since revealed that there were 180 rounds of ammunition in his rifle when they found it discarded in the school.
What prompted him to stop shooting when he did remains unclear. By the time he dropped the gun, he had fired 150 shots.