Never knew shooter was a monster, say caretakers

Washington, Feb. 19: The couple who took in Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz after his mother's death have described him as quirky but pleasant and seemingly on the right track, saying they had no idea they had a “monster living under our roof.”

Cruz, 19, moved in with James and Kimberly Snead of Parkland, Florida, in late November after his adoptive mother died earlier that month from complications of pneumonia, they told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an interview published on Sunday.

He was a friend of their son. Prone to odd eating and sleeping habits and unused to any form of housework, he was nevertheless making progress in dealing with his grief and kept himself busy with adult education classes along with his job at a discount store, the couple said.

“I told him there'd be rules and he followed every rule to the T,” James Snead, 48, an army veteran and military intelligence analyst, told the paper. “We had this monster living under our roof and we didn't know,” added Kimberly Snead, 49, a neonatal nurse. “We didn't see this side of him.”

Cruz killed 17 people at his former high school last Wednesday using an AR- 15 rifle that he had legally purchased. It was the country's worst school massacre since the horror at Sandy Hook six years ago that left 26 dead.

He also owned several other guns including two other assault rifles as well as knives, according to the Sneads who own firearms themselves and did not find this unusual.