![]() ![]() "Nikolas' personal goal is to mainstreamed to his home high school," according to a Broward school system report from June 2015, the end of his ninth-grade year. He didn't want to be there but attended through January in his 10th-grade year. Records show he left during eighth grade for Cross Creek School in Pompano Beach, which offers a program for emotionally and behaviorally disabled children. It didn't work out for Cruz to remain at Westglades Middle School in Coral Springs. A year later, she told deputies Nikolas, then 15, had punched the wall after she took away his Xbox.Ĭruz never graduated high school, though he was still trying at age 19.įoul language, insults, disobedience, disruption - Cruz's behavior was exactly what schoolteachers frowned upon. A few months later, she told deputies he had thrown her against the wall because she took away his Xbox gaming system. "Including me.When he was 14, his mother reported that he had hit her with the plastic hose from a vacuum cleaner. "A lot of people failed him," he told the Herald. Zachary Cruz says he now wished he, his mother or someone would have gotten help for his brother. We do know there were many, many opportunities where the system was interacting with Cruz and each time he slipped through the cracks," Jarvis said. ![]() "We really don't know what the police would have done. Robert Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University's law school, pointed to the numerous times law enforcement, school officials and others were called or alerted about Nikolas Cruz's bizarre and violent behavior throughout his adolescence, but he was never arrested or given intensive treatment. "That would have increased the likelihood he would not have been able to carry out what he did." "If the police found probable cause to support the accusations, they would have arrested Cruz and seized the guns as evidence," said Weinstein, who is now a criminal defense attorney. Two lawyers interviewed by The Associated Press on Thursday said assuming Zachary Cruz's statements are truthful and accurate, it is impossible to say with certainty that if police had been called the massacre could have been prevented.įormer federal and state prosecutor David Weinstein thinks it likely, but only if Zachary and Lynda Cruz didn't back down when officers interviewed them. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Nikolas Cruz's attorneys have conceded he was the shooter and have said he would plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. He says his bother responded nonchalantly, "I would just kill people." During her illness, Zachary Cruz says he asked his brother what he would do if she died. Their mother died in November of pneumonia. I think he just came up and he put his gun away and I hung up." "He was in the middle of the driveway, in the middle of the street with his AR-15," Cruz said. Zachary Cruz said he watched from his second-floor window as Nikolas Cruz followed her outside. Zachary Cruz says his brother pointed a rifle at their mother, Lynda Cruz, last September after she wouldn't take him to a cabin, cursing her and saying he was going to shoot her in the head. That came after he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor trespassing at Stoneman Douglas for riding his skateboard on campus about a month after the shooting. "I never messed with him again," said Zachary Cruz, who last weekend moved to Virginia to take a job with a nonprofit organization. ![]() He says his brother calmed down, put the gun back in his room and then watched TV. "If you are going to shoot me, shoot me!" he says he yelled at his brother, as their horrified mother looked on. He said his brother ran upstairs and came back pointing a rifle at him. Zachary Cruz told the newspaper his brother threatened him after he slapped Nikolas' hands for sticking fingers into a jar of Nutella. "He was mentally ill, and in hindsight, his actions were a cry for help," said Zachary Cruz, 18 and a year younger than his brother. 14.ĭuring the interview he also told about his brother's habit of cutting himself, his fixation on guns and violence and his penchant for killing squirrels, birds and lizards and taking pictures or pieces of their corpses as a souvenir. Zachary Cruz told The Miami Herald in an interview published Thursday both incidents happened months before Nikolas Cruz allegedly killed 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. RELATED: Judge: Accused Parkland shooter's brother, Zachary Cruz, allowed to move to Virginia after arrest (AP) - The brother of the teen charged with killing 17 at a Florida high school says the shooting suspect pointed a rifle at him and another time at their mother, but they didn't call 911 - which a former prosecutor says may have been failed opportunities to prevent the massacre. ![]()
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