Nikolas Cruz charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland
Oliver Laughland and Richard Luscombe in Parkland and Jon Henley
Thu 15 Feb 2018 07.20 EST Last modified on Thu 15 Feb 2018 10.05 EST
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Questions have emerged over whether law enforcement officials and local authorities failed to act on warning signals about the teenage gunman who killed 17 people in a Florida high school with an AR-15 assault rifle on Wednesday.
Former classmates of the suspected gunman, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder on Thursday, described him as “weird” and “a loner”, and said “everyone predicted” he would “do something”. Last year he was expelled from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland for disciplinary reasons.
A comment left on a YouTube video by a user named Nikolas Cruz warning “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” was also flagged to law enforcement officials last September and subsequently removed by YouTube.
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Ben Bennight, who posted the video and alerted the FBI, told Buzzfeed News that officers had followed up “immediately”, asking him if he knew anything about the user who had left the comment and taking a copy of his screenshot.
While the FBI has not confirmed the account belonged to the alleged gunman, FBI agents interviewed Bennight again after the shooting, wanting to know if he knew anything about the user who had left the comment.
The Nikolas Cruz YouTube account was taken down on Wednesday night. The Broward County sheriff, Scott Israel, who identified the shooter as Cruz, said police had found “very disturbing” material when searching his social media.
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Twelve people died inside the high school, two more just outside the building, one in a nearby street and two in hospital, Israel confirmed, adding that the gunman had been armed with at least one assault rifle and “countless magazines, multiple magazines”.
Cruz was booked into the county jail in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday morning after being questioned for several hours by state and federal authorities.
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In a tweet on Thursday morning Donald Trump made no mention of gun control, instead focusing on Cruz’s background. “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior,” Trump wrote. “Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”
On Wednesday, officers surrounded the campus, directing the evacuation of hundreds of students, while other teenagers hid inside cupboards and under desks to stay safe. Witnesses later told reporters that they thought the school alarms were a fire drill until they heard gunshots in the hallways.
Students are released from a lockdown at the high school in Florida. Photograph: John Mccall/Sun-Sentinel via Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
The tragedy appears to be the eighth deadliest mass shooting in modern US history and one of the worst ever school massacres. Israel – whose triplets attended the school – called it a “horrific, horrific day”.
A total of 17 people were taken to three hospitals, of whom two died, and at least three more were in critical condition. The suspect was also treated and released into police custody.
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Dakota Mutchler, a 17-year-old junior at the school and a former friend of Cruz, said he had started “progressively getting a little more weird, and I kind of cut off from him”. Mutchler said Cruz had posted about killing animals on social media and talked about guns and target practice.
“Everyone in the school that knew him speculated abou!
