The brother of the teen charged with killing 17 people at a Florida high school says the shooting suspect pointed a rifle at him and another time at their mother, but they didn’t call 911.
Zachary Cruz told The Miami Herald in an interview published Thursday that both incidents happened months before the February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz is accused of.
The 18-year-old says after he slapped Nikolas’ hands for eating Nutella out of the jar with his fingers, his brother charged upstairs, grabbed his gun and then came downstairs and pointed it at him.
‘If you’re gonna shoot me, shoot me!’ Zachary recalled shouting at his brother.
Zachary Cruz, pictured, sat down for an interview with the Miami Herald, which was published on Thursday
Zachary says his brother eventually put the gun down, stored it back in his room and came back downstairs as if nothing had happened.
‘After that day, I never messed with him again,’ Zachary said.
On another occasion, Zachary says he witnessed his brother point a gun at their mother during an argument last September.
‘Nik got his AR-15 and put it to my mom’s head. He was yelling at her because she wouldn’t take him to a cabin.
‘He yelled at her and said “I’m gonna blow your [expletive] brains out!'” Zachary recalled.
He says his mother got in the car and fled the home, while her son followed her out into the driveway with the gun.
Zachary says he was about to call 911 when his brother finally put down the gun. His mom returned and no one informed the police.
In the interview, Zachary, left, recalled two occasions in which his brother Nikolas, right, pointed a gun at him and their mother. The brothers are pictured above interring their mother’s ashes after her death in November
Zachary and Nikolas are half-brothers, sharing the same mother. They were adopted by Roger and Lynda Cruz as babies. Their father died in 2004 from a heart attack and their mother died late last year from pneumonia. The brothers pictured above (Nikolas on the left and Zachary on the right) as children
The Cruz brothers were born to the same mother, with different fathers, and adopted by Roger and Lynda Cruz when they were babies.
In 2004, their adoptive father died of a heart attack.
Zachary speculated that it was their adoptive mother’s death in November, due to pneumonia, that may have unhinged him and set him on a course for the Parkland massacre.
A month or two before Lynda’s death, the brothers were walking home from the community pool when Zachary asked what Nikolas would do if their mom died.
‘I would just kill people,’ Nikolas responded. Zachary changed the subject.
Then, after Lynda died, he could tell that Nikolas was upset that more people didn’t attend her funeral.
Nikolas (pictured above in April) is currently awaiting trial for murdering 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day
‘It made us feel like we had no one in this world,’ he said.
After their mother’s death, Zachary and Nikolas were sent to live with one of their old neighbors in a trailer park. Soon after, Nikolas began acting out, including making strange noises throughout the night, that their host, Rocxanne Deschamps wanted him out of the house. He went to live with a friend, while Zachary stayed with Deschamps.
Zachary himself was sentenced to probation for trespassing at the school after the shooting. He says he needed to see the scene in order to process the terrible thing his brother had done
However, since the attack, Zachary’s relationship with Deschamps has deteriorated as well.
Earlier this month, a Virginia-based non-profit convinced a judge to let Zachary move there, where they secured him a $13-an-hour job and a place to live. (He is on probation for trespassing at the school where the shooting took place. Zachary says he needed to visit the site to process the terrible thing his brother had done.) He left for Virginia right after his interview with the Herald. He says he hopes to get his high school diploma online and start a non-profit to end bullying.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Zachary said there have been some false reports about himself.
He says reports of him talking about how ‘popular’ his brother had become during a jail house visit were ‘a flat-out lie’.
‘I was trying to make him understand that what he did was a big deal, that it’s serious. I tried to make him understand that it goes beyond Parkland, the news was all over the world, just like Osama bin Laden,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to admire about what he did.’
Zachary himself is dealing with guilt over the massacre. He believes he could have been more loving with his brother, who he knew was lonely and had a hard time making friends because of his autism.
‘He just stood out, him in his baggy clothes and undone shoelaces.
‘My heart still feels heavy because of all of it. I should have stepped up. He had nobody,’ Zachary said.
He also feels sorry he didn’t alert authorities about him too, since there were so many troubling signs.
‘He was mentally ill, and in hindsight, his actions were a cry for help,’ Zachary said.