PARKLAND SCHOOL SHOOTER

Nikolas Cruz used to strut around the house with a shotgun, playing a Grammynominated song about school shootings and pretending to pull the trigger, according to his brother.

FORT LAUDERDALE — Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz used to strut around the house with a shotgun, playing a song about school shootings and pretending to pull the trigger, his brother says.

“You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun,” the song intones. “Better run, better run, faster than my bullet.”

Nikolas Cruz would “act like he’s shooting stuff” while the Grammy-nominated song “Pumped Up Kicks” played in the background, his brother, Zachary Cruz, told a detective.

“I would just look at him, like, you’re a clown, dude. What are you doing?” Zachary Cruz said the night of Feb. 14, just hours after Nikolas Cruz had killed 17 people and wounded 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Prosecutors released the statement as part of the criminal case. Asked whether Nikolas Cruz ever discussed shooting up the school, Zachary Cruz said no but offered that there were “signs.”

“Do you know the song ‘Pumped up Kicks?’ You know what the song’s about? I would hear him playing that song,” he said.

The hit song, by the indie pop band Foster the People, is widely lampooned and celebrated by fans online in memes and homemade videos. It rose to No. 3 on Billboard’s top songs chart in 2011 and was a contender in 2012 for a Grammy Award.

The band is a supporter of the Parkland survivors’ March for Our Lives movement to ban assault-style rifles and fund proven violence prevention programs.

In the days after the shooting at Stoneman Douglas, the band’s Twitter page called on fans to “march with our kids in solidarity. loud voices. peaceful protest,” compelling one person to retort: “Didn’t you guys write a hit song glamorizing gun violence?”

The song is about a “cowboy kid” named Robert who thinks about shooting up his school with a “six shooter gun” found in his father’s closet. The title refers to Reebok inflatable — or pumpedup — high-top sneakers popular in the 1990s among rich kids, the gunman’s prospective targets.

In contrast to the lyrics, the tune is upbeat and bouncy. The lead vocalist, Mark Foster, is a Beach Boys fan, and the music video shows scenes of Foster’s band joyfully making music — and surfing. The video does not depict any shooting. It has been viewed on YouTube hundreds of millions of times.

Foster has explained publicly that the song was not meant to encourage violence but to raise awareness of it.

“It feels like these mass shootings are just becoming common now,” Foster told CNN in November 2017, before the Parkland tragedy. “I wrote that song seven years ago, predicting that it’s going to get worse before it got better.”

In that interview Foster said he penned the song to urge people to “do something about gun violence” and “wanting legislation to be passed.”

The band’s former bassist, Cubbie Fink, has a cousin who survived the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, according to published reports. He did not return a message left on his wife’s