Mass killer practised shooting in his garden

MASSACRE gunman Nikolas Cruz practised his shooting in his back garden before killing 17 pupils and teachers at a Florida school. Cruz, 19, who was said to be obsessed with firearms, was filmed by a neighbour in video footage which emerged yesterday. The teenager was shirtless and wearing boxer shorts and a Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” slogan cap. In the video, he is seen firing off rounds from a handgun before tucking the weapon into his pants and going back inside. Cruz is on 24-hour suicide watch in prison after making a court appearance on Thursday. Court documents state he confessed to being the gunman who brought terror to his former school in Parkland, Florida. Yesterday, a British teenager told how he hid in a cupboard with classmates as Cruz went on the rampage at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Lewis Mizen, 17, originally from Coventry, said the atrocity was “a nightmare come to life”. He was in a science class when Cruz stormed the building armed with an AR-15 assault rifle. Lewis said he and his classmates heard the fire alarm and calmly left the room, assuming it was a drill. But as they walked down a corridor, school administrators began screaming: “Code red, get back in the building.” Lewis, who moved to the US with his family in 2009, hid in a storage cupboard with classmates so they were out of Cruz’s sight. “We were all on our phones,” he said. “I had people next to me watching CNN, trying to figure out what’s going on. “I have friends who have been killed, who have been shot. How can this be real?” Lewis and his classmates spent two hours in the cupboard before SWAT teams stormed into the room and told them they were safe.