FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - A former student accused of last week's deadly shooting at a Florida high school returned to court for one of 2 hearings on Monday in a case that has galvanized advocates of stricter gun control, including many of the rampage survivors.
Nikolas Cruz, his head bowed, hands shackled to his waist and wearing a red, jail-issued jumpsuit, showed no emotion during the first, procedural session in Fort Lauderdale.
The hearing ended with Broward Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Scherer ruling that a defense motion filed last week remain sealed from public view. The content of the motion, sealed by another judge, was not described in the hearing.
In the second hearing, the judge ordered the release of parts of a mental health assessment of Cruz by the Florida Department of Children and Families in November 2016. The report had already been leaked to a local newspaper.
Cruz, who did not attend the second session, is facing 17 counts of premeditated murder after the attack last Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, near Fort Lauderdale. It is the deadliest shooting ever at a US high school.
The suspect, whose mother died in November, was assessed by the authorities after videos surfaced on the social media platform Snapchat showing him cutting himself, according to a report in South Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper.
“Mr. Cruz has fresh cuts on both his arms. Mr. Cruz stated he plans to go out and buy a gun. It is unknown what he is buying the gun for,” the report was quoted as saying.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged it failed to act on a tip warning that Cruz possessed a gun and the desire to kill.
Cruz's team of public defendants petitioned for the release, and Florida Circuit Court Judge Charles Greene, who presided over the hearing, agreed. But he stopped short of allowing the release of details of the suspect's mental health history and child abuse records.
"The public has a right to know whether the information that has been broadcast and disseminated is accurate,” Greene said of the information already leaked. “If there are shortcomings in the department, the public has a right to know.”
Student survivors gathered with teachers and gun safety advocates on Monday to plan a visit to the state capital of Tallahassee on Wednesday. They will demand state lawmakers enact a ban the sale of assault weapons in Florida.
The White House said on Monday that President Donald Trump supports efforts to improve federal background checks for gun purchases. He also angered some students by suggesting in a tweet on Saturday that the FBI had missed signs that the shooter was troubled because it was distracted by its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
PARKLAND, UNITED STATES - A troubled teen with alleged ties to a white supremacist group confessed Thursday to murdering 17 people at his former high school in Florida, as the FBI admitted it had received a tip-off about the 19-year-old gunman yet failed to stop him.
As Americans reeled from the country's worst school massacre since the horror at Sandy Hook 6 years ago, President Donald Trump suggested the root cause of the violence was a crisis of mental health -- and defied calls to address gun control.
Terrified students hid in closets and under desks on Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, texting for help as the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, stalked the school with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.
Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, appearing Thursday afternoon before a judge who ordered him held without bond.
After being read his legal rights, "Cruz stated that he was the gunman who entered the school campus armed with a AR-15 and began shooting students that he saw in the hallways and on the school grounds," court documents showed.
Cruz also admitted he discarded his rifle -- which he bought legally in Florida -- and tactical gear in order to blend in with the crowd to flee the campus, the documents showed.
After the shooting, he stopped at a Wal-Mart store and then McDonald's, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters. He was detained 40 minutes later, after police identified him using school security camera footage.
Expelled from school for disciplinary reasons, Cruz was known to be fixated on firearms -- and had reportedly been identified as a potential threat to his classmates.
In a somber televised address to the nation in response to the 18th school shooting so far this year, Trump vowed to make mental health a priority -- after tweeting about the "many signs" the gunman was "mentally disturbed" -- while avoiding any talk of gun curbs.
Earlier in the day, Trump had asserted that "neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!"
But US authorities themselves were under scrutiny, after the FBI confirmed it was alerted last September to a message posted on YouTube, in which a user named Nikolas Cruz vowed: "I'm going to be a professional school shooter."
In a statement, the FBI said it had carried out "database reviews and other checks" but was unable to identify the person who made the post.
'SOMETHING WAS OFF'
A mugshot of Cruz depicts an ordinary-looking young man -- cleanly-cut chestnut hair, hazel eyes, his face speckled with freckles.
But the information emerging since his attack suggests there were red flags that should have set off danger alerts.
"I met him last year, he was in my class at the beginning of the year and when I first met him, I knew that something was off about him and he was kind of weird," Manolo Alvarez, 17, told AFP.
Fellow students knew he posted violent messages online, and on Thursday the Anti-Defamation League reported he was a member of a white supremacist group and had taken part in military-style training exercises.
Jordan Jereb, believed to lead the shadowy Republic of Florida (ROF), however told the rights group that his organization had not supported Cruz's attack.
"Nobody I know told him to do that, he just freaked out," Jereb said in a separate interview with The Daily Beast, adding that Cruz "seemed like just a normal, disenfranchised, young white man."
"I don't know precisely what he believes," he said. "I know he knew full well he was joining a white separatist paramilitary proto-fascist organization."
'FAILING OUR KIDS'
Fifteen people were killed at the high school, and 2 later died in hospital.
One of those killed was Aaron Feis, a well-loved football coach in Parkland, a city of about 30,000 people located north of Miami where Trump was due to travel to meet the shocked community.
Two of the wounded remained hospitalized in critical but stable condition, while 6 others were on the way to a full recovery, officials told a news conference.
The school shootings are part of a broader epidemic of gun violence in a country that loses 33,000 people to gun-related deaths each year, two-thirds of them suicides.
While the latest shooting reignited questions about America's gun laws, Trump -- the first president to have addressed the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby -- staunchly opposes any additional controls.
Opponents of gun curbs have sought to steer public debate onto the motives -- and mental health -- of people using the weapons.
Former Democratic president Barack Obama issued a new appeal for action Thursday, insisting "we have to change" and calling for "long overdue, common-sense gun safety laws that most Americans want."
But many have given up hope of meaningful reform in a majority-led Republican Congress where Obama failed to enact gun curbs amid partisan rancor.
Since January 2013, there have been at least 291 school shootings across the country -- an average of one a week, according to the non-profit group Everytown for Gun Safety.
"It is pretty clear that we're failing our kids here," said Melissa Falkowski, a teacher who squeezed 19 students into a closet at the high school to shield them from harm.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
PARKLAND, Florida - A 19-year-old gunman returned to a Florida high school where he had once been expelled for disciplinary reasons and opened fire with an assault-style rifle on Wednesday, killing 17 people before he was arrested by police, authorities said.
The violence erupted shortly before dismissal at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, about 45 miles (72 km) north of Miami. Live television footage showed students streaming out of the building as dozens of police and emergency services personnel swarmed the area.
The gunman was identified as Nikolaus Cruz, who previously attended the school and was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said at a news briefing hours later. Officials initially misspelled the suspect's first name as Nikolas but later corrected it.
"It's a horrific situation," Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie told reporters separately.
The gunman surrendered to police without a struggle, Israel said. Investigators believe he was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and had multiple magazines of ammunition, according to the sheriff.
"It's catastrophic," Israel said. "There really are no words."
Twelve of the dead were killed inside the school, 2 others just outside,1 more on the street and 2 other victims died of their injuries at a hospital, Israel said. He said the victims comprised a mixture of students and adults.
The Valentine's Day bloodshed in the Miami suburb of gated communities with palm- and shrub-lined streets was the latest outbreak of gun violence that has become a regular occurrence at schools and college campuses across the United States over the past several years.
It was the 18th shooting in a US school so far this year, according to gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. That tally includes suicides and incidents when no one was injured, as well as the January shooting in which a 15-year-old gunman killed 2 fellow students at a Benton, Kentucky, high school.
SCENES OF FEAR
Staff and students told local media that a fire alarm went off around the time the shooting started, sparking chaos as some 3,300 students at the school first headed into hallways before teachers herded them back into classrooms, to seek shelter in closets.
Kyle Yeoward, a 16-year-old junior, told Reuters he was in the bathroom on the second floor of a building when he heard two shots.
"He let loose on the freshman building," Yeoward said.
CBS News posted a brief clip of cell phone video footage the network said was taken from inside a classroom, showing what appeared to be several students. A rapid series of loud gunshots are heard amid hysterical screaming and someone yelling, “Oh my God.”
McKenzie Hartley, 19, who identified herself as the sister of a student at the school described the scene in a text message to Reuters: "She heard him shooting through the windows of classrooms and two students were shot."
Anguished parents checked on their children.
"It is just absolutely horrifying. I can't believe this is happening," Lissette Rozenblat, whose daughter goes to the school, told CNN. Her daughter called her to say she was safe but the student also told her mother she heard the cries of a person who was shot.
Televised images showed dozens of students, their arms in the air, weaving their way between law enforcement officers with heavy weapons and helmets, and large numbers of emergency vehicles including police cars, ambulances and fire trucks.
The school had recently held a meeting to discuss what to do in such an attack, Ryan Gott, a 15-year-old freshman told CNN.
"My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting," US President Donald Trump said on Twitter. "No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
