REVEALED: Expelled gunman in gas mask and armed with smoke grenades ‘SET OFF fire alarm so he could draw students into halls for maximum devastation’ before shooting dead 17 people
Former student Nikolas Cruz, 19, was arrested after opening fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday
Broward Sheriff Scott Israel confirmed that 17 people had been killed and dozens more were injured
Cruz was armed with at least one AR-15 rifle and had ‘multiple magazines’ when he stormed the school
Investigators are now looking into whether Cruz may have pulled the fire alarm to draw people into halls
The teenager had been expelled from the school last year for unknown ‘disciplinary reasons’
Police say the shooter managed to evade police by fleeing the school with hundreds of terrified students
He was tracked down in a nearby neighborhood after authorities reviewed surveillance footage
Traumatized students said that once they heard reports of a mass shooting at the school they knew it would be Cruz, while one teacher said he had been identified as a potential threat to his classmates last year
Some students barricaded themselves inside their classrooms while others were seen sprinting away from the school as police and SWAT teams swarmed the building
A student who claims to know Cruz said the suspected gunman was a ‘troubled kid’ and obsessed with guns
By Hannah Parry and Emily Crane
DailyMail.com
15 February 2018
The teen gunman who shot dead 17 people at a Florida high school is believed to have set off the fire alarms to draw people out into the halls before he opened fire – and then managed to evade police by pretending to be one of the terrified students running for cover.
Nikolas Cruz, 19, stormed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Wednesday afternoon armed with an assault rifle.
Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said Cruz was a former student at the school but had been expelled for unknown ‘disciplinary reasons’ last year.
Cruz was armed with at least one AR-15 rifle, had ‘multiple magazines’ and smoke grenades when he stormed the school wearing a gas mask.
Investigators are now looking into whether Cruz may have pulled the fire alarm to draw people into halls so he could get a higher death toll.
The first of the 17 victims has since been identified as 46-year-old athletic director Chris Hixon.
A number of students have said they thought they heard the fire alarm right before the first shots were fired. The school had already had a fire drill earlier that day, leaving many of the students confused.
Authorities have already started dissecting his social media accounts and reported that some of things he had been posting was ‘very disturbing’.
Traumatized students said that once they heard reports of a mass shooting at the school they knew it would be Cruz, while one teacher said he had been identified as a potential threat to his classmates last year.
Matthew Walker, a 17-year-old student at the school, told WFOR-TV that all his classmates ‘knew it was going to be him.’
‘A lot of people were saying it was going to be him,’ he said. ‘A lot of kids threw jokes around saying that he was going to be the one to shoot up the school. It turns out that everyone predicted it. That’s crazy.’
‘He was going class to class just shooting at random kids,’ he said. ‘Everything he posts (on social media) is about weapons. It’s sick.’
Math teacher Jim Gard, who taught Cruz last year, told the Miami Herald: ‘We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him. There were problems with him last year threatening students and I guess he was asked to leave campus.’
Another student took to social media claiming Cruz had mental health issues that were ‘ignored by all the adults’.
‘He literally had an Instagram where he posted pictures of animals he killed gruesomely and he physically assaulted one of my friends once,’ the student added.
As a high school freshman, Cruz was part of the US military-sponsored Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corp program at the school.
Cruz was adopted as an infant and raised by Roger and Lynda Cruz, a family member told ABC News. Family say his adoptive mother died a few months ago.
The Rest…HERE
