(Nikolas Cruz - Broward County Sheriff's Office)
19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, the man responsible for killing 17 people at a Florida high school, had a history full of red flags. Before 6:00 AM this morning Cruz was formally booked into Broward County jail and was charged 17 counts of premeditated murder.
Students described Cruz as an awkward outcast who was rude, showed off his weapons on Instagram, and didn't have any friends.
Officials confirmed that Cruz was expelled and told never to return to the school wearing a bag, after bullets were found in his backpack.
Cruz's mother, Lynda Cruz, died of pneumonia on November 1st, and her husband died of a heart attack several years ago. Lynda Cruz and her husband adopted Nikolas and his biological brother Zachary after moving from Long Island, New York to Broward County.
After the mother died, the boys were left in the care of a family friend. Nikolas Cruz was not happy there, so he moved in with another family around Thanksgiving.
He owned an AR-15, which he bought legally, and kept it in a locked box at the family's request, but he still kept the key.
“Honestly, a lot of people were saying that it was gonna be him. Actually, a lot of kids joked... saying that he was gonna be the one to shoot up the school, but it turns out, you know, everyone predicted it, that’s crazy. He was in the third floor. He knows the school layout, he knows where everyone would be... he’s been in the fire drills. He’s prepared for this stuff.”
Another student told BuzzFeed News:
"He was off. He was super stressed-out all the time and talked about guns a lot and tried to hide his face.”
On social media Cruz wrote slurs against blacks and Muslims and had ties to a white supremacist group. He wrote about shooting people with his AR-15 and expressed desire to shoot police. Five months ago he wrote that he wanted to be a "professional shooter."