Nikolas Cruz’s co-workers were shocked to hear that their colleague had committed one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history last week, with one noting that he’d made plans to go to a shooting range with Cruz just the previous day.
Cruz worked at the Dollar Tree in in Parkland, Florida, before he was arrested on 17 counts of premeditated murder on Feb. 14. His co-workers thought of him as a “happy,” “fragile” kid, and possibly a “loner.”
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However, he made at least one friend in the store — Brian Halem. Like Cruz, Halem is 19 years old. He’s a freshman at Florida Atlantic University, and he shared Cruz’s interest in firearms.
“Cruz was a walking dictionary,” Halem told The Miami Herald. “He knew guns in and out.”
Halem graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last June, shortly after Cruz was expelled. He said the two of them had a budding friendship at the Dollar Tree. On Tuesday, Feb. 13, Cruz gave his phone number to Halem so that they could coordinate a trip to the shooting range at Gun World of South Florida in Deerfield Beach.
“Save it as, ‘Crazy Nick,’” Cruz reportedly joked as Halem entered his contact information. The joke now seems ominous, as the next day, Cruz walked into their former high school with an AR-15 assault rifle and attacked their former teachers and classmates.
Halem was in awe that his co-worker had that darkness bubbling under the surface.
“He was like Two-Face [the Batman villain],” he told reporters, “but I only saw one face.”
Halem reportedly lost two friends in the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High.
When asked what kind of sentence he foresees for Cruz, Halem said he wouldn’t be sorry to hear that he was receiving the death sentence.
“He’s a disgusting and vile human being,” he said. “Whatever happens to him he deserves.”
Other staff members at the Dollar Tree were just as surprised by Cruz’s assault on the high school.
“He was always happy, he was always smiling,” recalled April Woods, who also worked with Cruz on Tuesday, the day before the shooting. She remembered Cruz best for wearing the same green hoodie all the time and complaining that the store was cold.
“I called him Fragile Nick,” she said.
She also thought of Cruz as someone who kept to themselves, though she didn’t think it was a warning sign.
“He seemed like a loner,” Woods said.
Cruz reportedly took the job at the store in November, shortly after his mother passed. Hunter Vukelich, his former manager, told the Herald he’d invited Cruz to play basketball several times in an effort to make him feel included, but Cruz never showed up.
Cruz’s co-workers weren’t the only ones shocked by his transformation into a killer. The Snead family, who took Cruz in after his mother’s passing, said the 19-year-old was polite and respectful. They now feel that he “pulled one over” on them, though they maintain that he had the right to own an assault rifle.
