US seeks answers on school shooter
Trump weighs in on ‘disturbed’ gun enthusiast who killed 17
PRESIDENT Donald Trump demanded to know yesterday how a disturbed former pupil who had an obsession with firearms slipped through the net to sow carnage at a Florida high school, killing at least 17 people in the latest gun massacre to rock the United States.
The 19-year-old suspect, Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over Wednesday’s deadly rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, America’s worst school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre left 20 children and six teachers dead in 2012.
After a night of questioning in police custody, the man was reportedly transferred to a Florida jail early yesterday.
Trump ordered flags to fly at half-mast and was due to deliver a televised address to a nation stunned by the mounting toll of school shootings which US authorities have so far appeared powerless to stop.
Wednesday’s harrowing shooting spree saw terrified pupils hiding in cupboards and under desks as they texted for help, while the gunman stalked the school with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.
Fifteen people were killed at the school itself, and two later died in hospital.
One of those killed was a football coach in Parkland, a city of about 30 000 people, 80km north of Miami.
Trump weighed in on the tragedy on Twitter by pointing to indications that the shooter – who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons – was mentally disturbed.
“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behaviour,” Trump wrote.
“Neighbours and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”
Cruz was reportedly known to have firearms at home and had talked about using them.
A teacher at the school said Cruz had been identified previously as a potential threat to his classmates.
“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” maths teacher Jim Gard said in a Miami Herald interview.
“There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
According to a BuzzFeed report, the FBI had been informed Cruz could carry out a school shooting last year, after the teen commented on a video: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”
The creator of the video tipped off both the FBI and YouTube, BuzzFeed said.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio yesterday called Cruz a deeply disturbed person, and questioned how the teenager “escaped detection, was able to acquire this weapon, and then go on and kill 17 people and injure many more”.
“This was someone that people knew was a danger,” Rubio said.
The United States has been hit by almost 20 school shootings since the start of the year, a terrifying phenomenon that is part of a broader epidemic of gun violence in a country that loses 33 000 people to gun-related deaths each year.
While the latest mass shooting has inevitably reignited questions about America’s permissive gun laws, Trump – who is the first president to have addressed the NRA gun lobby – is staunchly opposed to any additional gun control.
Opponents of gun control have consistently sought to steer public debate away from the issue, and onto the behaviour and motives of people using the weapons.
Questioned at a news conference late on Wednesday, Florida governor Rick Scott – who described the massacre as “just pure evil” – declined to make a statement on gun control.
“There’s a time to continue to have these conversations about how through law enforcement, how through mental illness funding that we make sure people are safe, and we’ll continue to do that,” Scott, a Republican, said.
Cruz had mixed in with pupils fleeing the school before being caught, officials said.
“We have already begun to dissect his websites and things on social media that he was on and some of the things are very, very disturbing,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
“If a person is predisposed to commit such a horrific event by going to a school and shooting people, there’s not anybody or not a lot law enforcement can do about it. This is a terrible day for Parkland.” – AFP