Inquiry targets shooter’s social media

Detectives have filed more than a dozen search warrants hoping to get a better look at Nikolas Cruz’s social media activity in the months leading up to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Cruz, with 17 murder.

The warrants are aimed at Instagram, Snapchat and Google, which owns YouTube. Cruz had multiple accounts on each platform, and investigators want to know what he was posting, 19, has been charged counts of first-degree whether he was telegraphing an intent to commit an act of violence, and what he was telling his friends.

The warrant applications do not disclose any new information about what happened at the school on Feb. 14, but they appear to show at least part of the investigation’s strategy into finding out when Cruz decided to become a killer.

Some of the warrants seek “all communications and or images which tend to establish the pre-planning and premeditation of suspect Nikolas Cruz to commit the crime of murder.”

The FBI in January was notified by an informant who was worried about Cruz’s social media postings. The Justice Department is investigating why no one acted on that tip, which included an account of the informant trying to send a private message to Cruz and getting brushed off.

The warrants show police are looking through cell phones, laptops, a personal computer and an Xbox owned by Cruz and seized in Palm Beach County. Cruz was staying with friends in Parkland at the time of the shooting but had been living in Lantana with a family friend in the days following the death of his mother last November.

Cruz’s father died in 2004.

Investigators are also seeking information from the ride-sharing service Uber, which Cruz reportedly used to travel to the high school the afternoon of the shooting. A warrant seeks a complete record of Cruz’s Uber use between his mother’s death and the school shooting.

Lawyers in the Cruz case are due back in court this morning. Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer decided Monday that she will not step aside from the case, rejecting a defense accusation that she has already shown favoritism to the prosecution.

Cruz is not required to attend today’s hearing.