Suspect confessed to Florida school attack
PARKLAND, FLA. — The teenager accused of using a semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 people at a Florida high school confessed to carrying out one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings and concealing extra ammunition in his backpack, according to a sheriff ’s department report released Thursday.
The report from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said Nikolas Cruz told investigators that he shot students in the hallways and on the grounds of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, north of Miami.
Cruz told officers he brought more loaded magazines to the school and kept them hidden in the backpack until he got on campus. As students began to flee, he said, he decided to discard his AR-15 rifle and a vest he was wearing so he could blend in with the crowd.
A day after the attack, a fuller portrait emerged of the suspect, a loner who had worked at a dollar store, joined the school’s ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) and posted photos of weapons on Instagram. At least one student said classmates joked that Cruz would “be the one to shoot up the school.”
Cruz, a 19-year-old orphan whose mother died last year, was charged with murder Thursday in the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in this sleepy community on the edge of the Everglades. It was the nation’s deadliest school attack since a man assaulted an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., more than five years ago.
Catarina Linden, a 16-year-old
sophomore, said she was in an advanced math class Wednesday when the gunfire began.
“He shot the girl next to me,” she said, adding that when she finally was able to leave the classroom, the air was foggy with gun smoke. “I stepped on so many shell casings. There were bodies on the ground, and there was blood everywhere.”
Some bodies remained inside the high school Thursday as authorities analyzed the crime scene. Thirteen wounded survivors were still hospitalized, including two in critical condition.
Authorities have not described any specific motive, except to say that Cruz had been kicked out of the high school for discipline issues, which has about 3,000 students and serves an affluent suburb. Students who knew him described a volatile teenager whose strange behaviour had caused others to end friendships with him.
Cruz was ordered held without bond at a brief court hearing. He wore an orange jumpsuit with his
hands cuffed at his waist. His attorney did not contest the order and had her arm around Cruz during the short appearance.
Afterward, she called him a “broken human being” and added that she “had to have the exact same conversation that every parent in Broward County had to have with their children this morning.”
Wednesday’s shooting was the 17th incident of gunfire at an American school this year. Of the 17 incidents, one involved a suicide, two involved active shooters who killed students, two involved people killed in arguments and three involved people who were shot but survived. Nine involved no injuries at all.
Two federal law enforcement officials said the Smith & Wesson M&P15 .223 rifle was purchased legally at Sunrise Tactical Gear in Florida. Cruz passed a background check and legally purchased the assault weapon from a licensed dealer in February 2017.