We recently noted that the FBI dropped the ball on the Parkland shooter, having received a very specific and explicit warning about Nikolas Cruz in early January 2018. That warning, including that Cruz was a potential school shooter, was ignored by the FBI.
Yet the more we learn about everything that came before the attack, the worse it gets. There were so many red flags.
Mandy Mayfield of the Washington Examiner reports that law enforcement got multiple calls about the shooter:
Sheriff says office received 20 calls about Florida shooter over last few yearsBroward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Friday that his office found that it had received approximately 20 calls related to Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old suspected of carrying out Florida’s deadliest high school shooting that left 17 people dead.”We have uncovered at the Broward Sheriff’s Office that we’ve had approximately 20 calls for service over the last few years regarding the killer,” Israel told reporters. “Every one of these calls for service will be looked at and scrutinized.””If we find out, like in any investigation, that one of our deputies or call-takers could have done something better or was remiss, I’ll handle it accordingly,” he added.
Haris Alic of the Washington Free Beacon goes back even further:
Report: Police Were Called to Suspected Florida Shooter’s Home 39 Times Over 7 YearsPolice were called to the home of Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Florida high school, on 39 occasions over a seven-year period, according to a new report.Cruz, a resident of Broward County, Florida, had long been on the community’s radar as a troubled student who showed signs of mental illness and depression, CNN reported Friday.Little is known about Cruz—who authorities charged with killing 17 people at his former school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, this week—apart from what the media and law enforcement have been able to gauge from his social media presence and stories from acquaintances. Cruz’s adoptive father died years ago, and his adoptive mother died in November after battling pneumonia, leaving him in the care of a local neighbor.
People in the school system knew the shooter was a threat and did what they could to take action.
Bob Norman of ABC 10 in Florida reports:
School considered shooting suspect potential ‘threat’ year before massacreAdministrators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School recommended back in January 2017 that the school board conduct a “threat assessment” on Nikolas Cruz to determine if he was a danger to the school and its students, according to documents exclusively obtained by Local 10 News.A copy of Cruz’s discipline summary shows that Cruz was involved in an assault at the school on Jan. 19, 2017, less than three weeks before he was transferred out of the school. It was on that date that the school put in a referral for the threat assessment on Cruz, who now faces 17 counts of premeditated murder for firing an AR-15 rifle at the high school on Valentine’s Day.It’s not known at this time what the result of the assessment was, or even if the school board conducted it, as board spokeswoman Tracy Clarke said she couldn’t answer those questions, citing student privacy.
In addition to making threatening comments on a YouTube video, the shooter cut himself on the social media site Snapchat in 2016. The Sun Sentinel reports:
Nikolas Cruz was investigated after cutting himself on Snapchat, state report showsNikolas Cruz cut his arms on Snapchat and said he wanted to buy a gun in September 2016, more than a year before he was accused of killing 17 people in a school in Parkland, Florida, records obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel show.The incident on the digital social network prompted an investigation by sheriff’s deputies and adult welfare investigators from the Department of Children & Family Services.The documents provide further evidence that Cruz was a troubled teen who repeatedly went without help before he stalked the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with an AR-15 rifle on Wednesday.In another stunning example, the FBI acknowledged Friday that it ignored a tip last month that Cruz was at risk of committing a school shooting.
All of this combines to make this horrific shooting even worse.
There were so many chances to prevent it.
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