At least 17 dead in Florida School Shooting

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Tim_Tex
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23 Mar 2018, 7:23 am

EzraS wrote:
One should not put too much faith in the accuracy of memes. Although I'm sure far too many do.


The meme that shows Trump saying "I'd run as a Republican because they're dumb and watch Fox News..." (or something like that) was debunked. Though I am no fan of Trump.


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18 Nov 2018, 2:16 am

More than 30 people didn't report disturbing behavior by Nikolas Cruz before Parkland massacre

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More than 30 people knew about disturbing behavior by Nikolas Cruz, including displaying guns, threatening to murder his mother and killing animals, but never reported it until after he committed the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Two students did report Cruz’s disturbing and threatening behavior but said they were brushed off by the school’s administration, according to testimony Tuesday to the commission. A detailed tip to the FBI also went unheeded, and on Tuesday, the parents of one of the murdered students sued the U.S. government over the FBI’s admitted failure.

In the years before the massacre, Cruz reportedly killed a duck with a tire iron, shot squirrels with a pellet gun, killed frogs and decapitated a bird, Pinellas County Sheriff’s Detective Chris Lyons said in a presentation to the commission, based on statements from students, neighbors and co-workers of Cruz and his mother. Cruz displayed a photo to a student of a decapitated cat.

He repeatedly made racist and anti-gay remarks,using the term “white power” and drawing swastikas on desks and his backpack. He remarked on the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and “said he was glad they killed all those gay people,” the detective said.

A student said he “made bad jokes about Jewish people, Nazis and Hitler and wished all Jews were dead,” he said. One 11th-grader reported that Cruz “told him he did not like black people and would like to shoot them,” he said.

Photos on Cruz’s Instagram account showed guns and knives. They showed a masked Cruz wearing a Make America Great Again hat and camouflage gear.

A bank employee who regularly saw his mother heard her phone conversations, in which Nikolas Cruz screamed that she should kill herself and that he would kill her and burn their house down.

Although his mother, Lynda Cruz, consistently defended him to school authorities, once calling him a “gentle soul,” her conversations with the bank employee told a different story, according to Tuesday’s testimony.

Lynda Cruz described her adopted son as “evil” and manipulative, complaining of being lonely and depressed to elicit sympathy. And she feared him. “If anything happens to me,” she told the bank employee, “it was Nik.”

But two students did say something in December, 2016, and they said Stoneman Douglas administrators ignored them, according to the Pinellas County detective’s presentation.

One student described a series of menacing actions by Cruz. He smashed a class project. He looked up firearms on a school computer. He posted Instagram photos of firearms. He had heard Cruz brought either a knife or bullets to school. Cruz told him he had two shotguns.

“He said Cruz said that he liked to see people in pain,” the detective said.

The student went with another student to report their concerns to assistant principal Jeff Morford, the detective said.

The student said Morford told them to google the word “autism” and told him Cruz was being taken out of the school by his parent so he shouldn’t worry about it. The other student in the meeting said it had been with Stoneman Douglas Principal Ty Thompson, not Morford, but Gualtieri said the consensus among investigators was that it had been Morford.

The student’s mother went to the school the next day and said she spoke with Stoneman Douglas Principal Ty Thompson, despite the other student’s claim it was Morford, the detective said. She said Thompson told her that if she wasn’t happy with the way the school was run, she could withdraw her son, he said.

Interviewed by the commission’s investigators, both Morford and Thompson deny that the students or one of their mothers had reported Cruz’s behavior to them.

But Gualtieri said the students accounts appeared credible, despite their confusion about who they talked to.

“They both corroborate each other,” he said. “It’s our consensus that they went to Morford, they did not go to Thompson. This is the same instance. You have two kids that are seeing this. They go together, and there’s a lot of corroboration for their version of this.”

ruz might have said frightening things to students, but Maxwell said his comments didn’t rise above those of other troubled kids.

“Unfortunately, there’s some very scary kids within the community,” she said, “and they’re numerous and it’s the public school system’s job to educate them. They don’t have a choice.”

“There was no reason to focus on Nik Cruz and zero in like he was capable of this. Had the administration been told specifically that he was threatening to shoot up the school, there would have been a very specific reaction.”

“Kids say crazy things every single day. They threaten to kill other kids. They see things on TV and just blurt it. If you jumped at every utterance made from a kid it would be impossible,” she said.

In a related development, the parents of one of the dead students, Jaime Guttenberg, sued the U.S. government Tuesday over the FBI’s failure to investigate a detailed January 2018 tip warning that Cruz could become a school shooter.

As they were planning their daughter’s funeral, Fred Guttenberg received a text message to call the FBI, according to the family’s lawsuit.

During the call, an FBI agent told him the bureau’s mistakes were about to become public, and he wanted to make sure he heard before that happened.

“Are you telling me that if the FBI did not make a mistake and did their job a month sooner, my daughter would still be alive today?” he asked, according to the suit.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” the agent said


Bolding mine


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21 Oct 2021, 5:28 am

Nikolas Cruz pleads guilty to 2018 Parkland school massacre

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Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty Wednesday to murdering 17 people during a rampage at his former high school in Parkland, Florida, leaving a jury to decide whether he will be executed for one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings.

Relatives of the victims who sat in the courtroom and watched the hearing via Zoom broke down in tears and held hands across families as Cruz entered his pleas and later apologized for his crimes.

The guilty pleas will set the stage for a penalty trial in which 12 jurors will determine whether Cruz, 23, should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. Given the case’s notoriety, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer plans to screen thousands of prospective jurors. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Jan. 4.

As several parents shook their heads, Cruz apologized, saying, “I’m very sorry for what I did. ... I can’t live with myself sometimes.” He also added that he wished it was up to the survivors to determine whether he lived or died.

By having Cruz plead guilty, his attorneys will be able to argue during the penalty hearing that he took responsibility for his actions.

As at any trial, prosecutors will present evidence of the shooting, including security video that reportedly shows many of the killings in graphic detail. They will also be allowed to show evidence that Cruz had long planned the attack and made threats through cellphone videos. There will be testimony from students and teachers who were in the building, including some who were wounded.

Prosecutors will also present testimony from the victims’ parents and spouses to demonstrate the toll the deaths have had on families and the community.

The defense will then present mitigating evidence that will likely include testimony about Cruz’s life, including his long history of mental and emotional instability, his father’s death when he was 5 and his mother’s death four months before the shootings, when he was 19.

To impose a death sentence, all 12 jurors must agree. If they do, Judge Scherer will make the final decision.


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21 Oct 2021, 8:41 pm

Danny Rolling was condemned despite his guilty plea



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14 Feb 2024, 5:30 pm

Parkland school shooting 6 years later: Remembering the 17 victims

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Alyssa Alhadeff, 14
Martin Duque Anguiano, 14
Scott Beigel, 35
Nicholas Dworet, 17
Aaron Feis, 37
Jaime Guttenberg, 14
Chris Hixon, 49
Luke Hoyer, 15
Cara Loughran, 14
Gina Montalto, 14
Joaquin Oliver, 17
Alaina Petty, 14
Meadow Pollack, 18
Helena Ramsay, 17
Alex Schachter, 14
Carmen Schentrup, 16
Peter Wang, 15


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman