Neighbors of the gunman in the Florida school shooting are speaking out, claiming they are “not surprised that it was him.”
In the wake of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that claimed 17 and wounded 14 others, a picture of the gunman Nikolas Cruz is beginning to emerge from those who knew him.
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“I’m not surprised that it was him.” Neighbors describe Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz as “weird” and “aggressive,” describing past instances of Cruz shooting chickens with pellet guns and harming other animals. https://t.co/KG7DlQUTKr pic.twitter.com/KMMbXLlFyK
— ABC News (@ABC) February 16, 2018
“Aggressive. Crazy. Weird. Psycho,” Brody Speno, Cruz’s neighbor, described the 19-year-old to ABC News.
Speno went on to described several instances in which he witnessed Cruz abusing animals.
“He was in our backyard one time, and our back neighbors have chickens, and he was, like, shooting at them with, like, a pellet gun or something weird,” he said. “And another incident is, I was next door with my neighbors, when I was younger…playing with them, and he came over uninvited, and we were nice about it because we felt bad for him, because he’s a little weird and we wanted to be friendly with him. And he, like, cornered a squirrel and was pegging rocks at it, like, trying to kill it. It was just weird that a kid that young was, like, murdering an animal.
“Not surprised that it was him,” Speno concluded.
Speno’s description of Cruz was shared by another neighbor, Malcom Roxbough, he claimed that he also witnessed Cruz using a pellet gun to shoot at chickens. He also stated he was a “strange character.”
“He was kind of a strange character in that he had a very – kind of a blank look in his face sometimes. In other words, he wasn’t – looked like he wasn’t thinking so well sometimes,” he said.
Cruz, 19, a former student of the Parkland, Florida high school, has been charged with 17 counts of murder.
It is believed that he entered the school just before dismissal on Feb. 14 armed with a legally purchased AR-15, multiple magazines of ammunition, a gas mask, and smoke grenades. The shooting, the third deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, left 17 students and adults dead and another 14 injured, some still fighting for their lives in the ICU.
