On February 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing seventeen students and staff members and injuring seventeen others. Witnesses identified 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz as the assailant, and he was arrested in Coral Springs by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office shortly after he escaped the scene. He confessed to being the perpetrator and he was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
It was [and hopefully still is (which means there was not another)] the deadliest shooting at a high school in United States’ history, surpassing the Columbine High School massacre which took place on April 20, 1999. The shooting came at a period of heightened public support for gun control following attacks in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Sutherland Springs, Texas respectively in October and November 2017.
The sheriff’s office received a number of tips in 2016 and 2017 about Cruz’s threats to carry out a school shooting. The FBI learned a YouTube user with the username “nikolas cruz” posted a message in September 2017, about becoming a school shooter, but the agency could not identify the user. In January 2018, someone contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation tip line with a direct complaint about Cruz making a death threat, but the complaint was not forwarded to the local FBI office. [I used that tip line to report something I found upsetting once and they did nothing with my tip except let the crime take place. I never wasted my time reporting anything again.]
Nikolas Jacob Cruz (born September 24, 1998, in Margate, Florida) was adopted at birth by Lynda and Roger Cruz. Roger died at age 67 in 2004. Lynda died at age 68 in November 2017, three months before the shooting. Nikolas had been living with relatives and friends since her death. At the time of the shooting, he was enrolled in a GED program and employed at a local dollar store.
Cruz was a member of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) and had received multiple awards “including academic achievement for maintaining an “A” grade in JROTC and “Bs” in other subjects,” according to CNN. He was also a member of his school’s varsity air rifle team.
Cruz had behavioral issues since middle school, but a Washington Post writer said he was “entrenched in the process [from school and mental health officials] for getting students help rather than referring them to law enforcement” and he was transferred between schools six times in three years to deal with these problems. In 2014, he was transferred to a school for children with emotional or learning disabilities. There were reports he made threats against other students. He returned to Stoneman Douglas High School two years later, only to be expelled from the school in 2017 for disciplinary reasons. An email from the school administration had circulated among teachers warning he had made threats against other students. This led the school to ban him from wearing a backpack on campus.
Psychiatrists recommended an involuntary admission of Cruz to a residential treatment facility starting in 2013. The Florida Department of Children and Families investigated him in September 2016, for Snapchat posts in which he cut both his arms and said he planned to buy a gun. At this time, a school resource officer suggested having him undergo an involuntary psychiatric examination under the provisions of the Baker Act. Two guidance counselors agreed, but a mental institution did not. State investigators reported he had depression, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In their assessment, they concluded he “was at low risk of harming himself or others.” He had previously received mental health treatment but had not received treatment in the year leading up to the shooting.<1>
Nikolas had two mothers: his birth mother, who gave him life, an almond-shaped head and auburn hair – and his adoptive mother, who gave him all the advantages of an upscale, suburban upbringing.
His birth mother, Brenda Woodard, was sometimes homeless and panhandled for money on a highway exit ramp. His adoptive mother, Lynda Cruz, stayed home to manage a 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom house in the suburbs, with a two-car garage and a sprawling yard.
A career criminal, Woodard’s 28 arrests included a 2010 charge for beating a companion with a tire iron; she also threatened to burn the friend’s house down. Lynda Cruz had a clean record.
Woodard was so gripped by addiction; she was arrested buying crack cocaine while pregnant with Nikolas. Lynda Cruz was known to drink wine, though not excessively.
Conventional wisdom suggests Nikolas Cruz should have taken after the woman who raised him from birth, rather than the one who shared only his DNA. But little of Cruz’s story is conventional. While, by most accounts, Lynda Cruz was thoughtful and disciplined, her adoptive son was violent and impulsive — characteristics he seems to share with the birth mother he never knew.
Though Nikolas was raised in comfort — Lynda Cruz apparently believed indulging her son with video games and weapons would soften his moods — the shadow of his genetic heritage seemed to loom over his life.
The identity of Cruz’s birth father is unclear.
Woodard’s third child, Zachary, also was adopted at birth by the Cruz family — and though he had a few minor brushes with the law, he had not been accused of a violent crime. He said in an interview both he and Lynda Cruz were afraid of Nikolas, who pulled guns on both of them over perceived slights.
It certainly seemed Nikolas was living in far better circumstances than those he could have had if he had grown up living with his mom in Woodward. His adoptive father, Roger, worked in advertising and provided a respectable, financially-stable life.
But Nikolas never fit into the Cruzes’ community and there were disturbing signs of things to come. He shot his neighbor’s chickens, he pointed a gun at half-brother Zachary when they argued over a jar of Nutella, and held an AR-15 to his mother’s head yelling he would blow her brains out. He got into fights at school, was reportedly abusive to a girlfriend, and made Internet postings about his fervent desire to shoot up a school.
All the while, Lynda Cruz tried her best to protect her son.
“I think she cared. She tried,” said Shelby Speno, 49, who lived two doors down from the Cruz family. “It wasn’t like he was running around and Lynda was always absent. She was with him at the bus stop. She’d call up and apologize [when he did something wrong]. She took responsibility for what he did.”<2>
CITED REFERENCES
1. Wikipedia contributors, “Stoneman Douglas High School shooting,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoneman_ ... l_shooting (accessed February 17, 2019).
2. “Nikolas Cruz’s birth mom had a violent, criminal past. Could it help keep him off Death Row?”
Carol Marbin Miller, Nicholas Nehamas. Miami Herald: September 5, 2018.
Link: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 09390.html (accessed February 17, 2019).
