Suspect declined transfer
Teachers wanted him helped.
PARKLAND, Fla. – Teachers and counselors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had hoped a transfer to an alternative school would provide mental health services for Nikolas Cruz after his behavior and discipline problems increased in 2016.
Broward County Superintendent Robert Runcie said Cruz’s situation at Stoneman Douglas had deteriorated so much that his counselors and teachers decided to refer him out of the school in early 2017. They hoped he would return to Cross Creek School, an alternative program with smaller classes and more comprehensive mental health services.
“He declined,” Runcie said. “When a kid turns 18, we can’t force an adult to receive those services.”
Students will return to class Wednesday for the first time since the shooting that killed 17 students and staff and injured 14 others Feb. 14.
Police say Cruz has confessed to the shooting. His lawyers have argued that the missed opportunities for intervention after reports of violence and threats documented by police, social workers and school counselors should spare him a death sentence.
Stoneman Douglas teachers and counselors became concerned about Cruz in late 2016, Runcie said.
In September that year, a student told police that Cruz, depressed and cutting himself, ingested gasoline in an attempt to kill himself at the high school. The student said Cruz wanted to buy a gun for hunting and had drawn a swastika on his backpack next to a racial slur.
Counselors from Henderson Behavioral Services, which had sent a mobile crisis team to the school in 2016, advised police that Cruz “was not a risk to harm himself or anyone else” because he was on a treatment plan for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and au- tism, according to police and social worker reports.
His medication, counseling and attentive mother had given him stability, the therapist said.
It was one of at least two times Henderson clinicians advised police against involuntary hospitalization — the other during a house call in 2013 after Cruz threw his mother against the wall for taking away his video games, according to records from the Sheriff ’s Office and Florida’s Department of Children and Families.
A school counselor told the state’s families department investigators that she expressed concerns that Henderson’s assessment might be premature. The agency closed the file six weeks later.
Runcie said in an interview that those educators who knew Cruz at Stoneman Douglas believed the referral to Cross Creek would be a positive influence on him. Cruz’s disciplinary records, obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK, show no problems reported while he attended Cross Creek from early 2014 through 2015. The year before, Cruz, who was 14, had 29 incidents in Westglades Middle School, ranging from fights to disruptive behavior.
Counselors from Henderson Behavioral Services advised police that Nikolas Cruz “was not a risk to harm himself or anyone else.”