Florida shooting clues missed

PARKLAND, Florida: As families prepared to bury victims of another US mass shooting, there is grief mixed with anger amid signs of possible lapses in school security and indications that law enforcement may have missed clues about the suspected gunman’s plans.

One distraught mother, who said she had just spent two hours making funeral preparations for her 14-year-old child, expressed disbelief that a gunman could just stroll into a school and open fire, and she appealed to President Donald Trump to take action.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, identified as a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who had been expelled for disciplinary problems, walked into the school on Wednesday and opened fire with an assault rifle, killing 17 students and facility members and injuring 15 others, police said.

The shooting has raised questions among anguished parents about the adequacy of school security measures and renewed a national debate on Capitol Hill and elsewhere about the epidemic of gun violence in American schools.

“The gunman, the crazy person, just walks right into the school, knocks down the window to my child’s door and starts shooting, shooting her… ,” cried Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was among the dead.

Cruz, charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, made a brief initial court appearance on Thursday, in which he was ordered held without bail.

“He’s a broken human being,” his lawyer, public defender Melissa McNeill, said. “He’s sad, he’s mournful, he’s remorseful.”

Cruz may

have

fore- shadowed the attack in a comment on YouTube, investigated by the FBI. The Federal Bureau of Investigation disclosed it received a tip in September about the message that read: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter,” by a user named Nikolas Cruz.

However, FBI agents had no information pointing to the “time, location or true identity” of the person behind the message, said Robert Lasky, special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Jacksonville. – Reuters

PICTURE: AP A woman places a poster of shooting victim Meadow Pollack at one of 17 crosses, after a candlelight vigil for the victims of Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, by gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19.