Guns, depression and a perennial menace
The former student behind the massacre had always had a rather foreboding presence before being expelled
Ateen who went to middle school with Nikolas Cruz at first thought there was maybe something “a little off about him. But it was nothing alarming.”
Then, as Cruz transitioned into high school, he “started progressively getting a little more weird,” said 17-year-old Dakota Mutchler. Cruz, he said, was selling knives out of a lunchbox, posting on Instagram about guns and killing animals, and eventually “going after one of my friends, threatening her.”
On Wednesday night, Mutchler recalled Cruz as an increasingly frightening figure, being suspended from school repeatedly, before he was expelled last year. “When someone is expelled,” Mutchler told The Washington Post, “you don’t really expect them to come back. But, of course, he came back.”
He came back to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with a vengeance, according to the Broward County sheriff, who identified Cruz, 19, as the gunman who killed 17 people and wounded 15 at the school.
Broward County mayor Beam Furr told CNN that Cruz had been getting treatment at a mental health clinic for a while, but that he had not been back to
Cruz fell off the radar. But he was having a rough time. His adoptive mother, Lynda Cruz, died in November of pneumonia.
the clinic for more than a year. “It wasn’t like there wasn’t concern for him,” Furr told CNN. “In this case, we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.”
Cruz fell off the radar. But he was having a rough time. His adoptive mother, Lynda Cruz, died in November of pneumonia.
Joshua Charo, 16, a former classmate during their freshman year, told the Miami Herald that all Cruz would “talk about is guns, knives and hunting.”
Drew Fairchild, also a classmate during Cruz’s freshman year, agreed. “He used to have weird, random outbursts,” he told the paper, “cursing at teachers”. An Instagram account that appeared to belong to the suspect showed several photos of guns.