Reports of potential warning signs against Nikolas Cruz prior to Wednesday’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida have been making waves for several days, but the latest one from CNN indicates Cruz was on law enforcement’s radar for several years.
According to CNN reporter Drew Griffin, the police were called to the home of Lynda Cruz, Nikolas’ adoptive mother, a total of 39 times since 2010.
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“The more we learn, the more we realize just what a life this kid, this shooter, was living,” Griffin told CNN anchor Don Lemon. “We’ve got records tonight from Brower County Sheriff of all the times the police were called to this family’s home over the past several years and it is extensive. We have records that show 39 times police were called to this one particular home where the shooter lived with his family since 2010. The calls, as delineated by the records, are for things like ‘mentally ill person,’ ‘domestic disturbance,’ many 9-1-1 hang-up calls, a ‘child-elderly abuse’ call, some for missing person calls. These are year-after-year, weekend after weekend, according to the neighbors, of police interacting with this family, with this shooter’s family. We don’t have the records behind this list, so we don’t know why all the calls were made.”
A video of Cruz doing “target practice” wearing boxer shorts and a “Make America Great Again” hat while firing a BB gun in the family’s backyard also surfaced on Thursday.
Cruz confessed to killing 17 people (14 students, three adults) while injuring over a dozen others when he walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday and opened fire with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle he legally purchased a year prior.
Cruz had been living with the family of a friend ever since Lynda Cruz passed away due to pneumonia in November.
“The family is devastated, they didn’t see this coming,” the family attorney Jim Lewis said. “They took him in and it’s a classic case of no good deed goes unpunished,” Lewis said. “He was a little quirky and he was depressed about his mom’s death, but who wouldn’t be?”
