美国国家公共电台 NPR Parkland Shooting Suspect: A Story Of Red Flags, Ignored

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

It's become increasingly clear that Nikolas Cruz, the young man who confessed to the high school shooting, was deeply troubled. Family, friends, neighbors all worried about him. So did social workers, teachers and sheriff's deputies in two counties. The 19-year-old was the subject of dozens of 911 calls over the years, including this one that Cruz made himself.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Nine-one-one emergency.

NIKOLAS CRUZ: Hi. I was just assaulted now. Someone tried to - someone attacked me.

SHAPIRO: Cruz had called the police in November after a fight at the house of family friends he'd been staying with.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CRUZ: I kind of got mad, and I started punching walls and stuff, and then a kid [expletive] came at me and threw me on the ground. And he started attacking me, and he kicked me out of the house.

SHAPIRO: NPR's Joel Rose is in Parkland, Fla., where he has been looking into Cruz's background. Hi, Joel.

JOEL ROSE, BYLINE 1: Hi, Ari.

SHAPIRO: Police reports and other records show dozens and dozens of calls about him. Why so many?

ROSE: Well, Nikolas Cruz was just 10 years old when his mother, Lynda, first called police to the house. And she kept calling them a lot over the next 10 years, often to help break up fights between Nikolas Cruz and his brother and just sort of to get them under control. Over time, the allegations get more serious, more violent. Police were called once because Cruz shot a BB gun at a chicken in the neighborhood. And in early 2016, another neighbor called the Broward Sheriff's Office to report an Instagram post where Cruz had threatened to shoot up a school. The sheriff's deputy reported this to the school resource officer at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, but apparently 2 that is where it ended.

SHAPIRO: So that was the sheriff's involvement. I know the Florida Department of Children and Families also became involved. What can you tell us about that?

ROSE: Yeah. The Department of Children and Families gets involved later in 2016 after Nikolas Cruz was cutting himself and apparently posting about it on Snapchat. They note that Cruz has been diagnosed with a number of conditions, including depression, and that he planned to buy a gun. But the report concludes that Cruz was undergoing mental health counseling and that he was not a risk to harm himself or others.

SHAPIRO: And what have you learned about his family life?

ROSE: We know that Nikolas Cruz and his younger brother were adopted by Roger and Lynda Cruz, bought a big house in Parkland, Fla. We know that Roger died when the children were young and that Lynda raised them by herself and that it was something of a struggle. We know the family sold the house in 2017 in a short sale. And I talked to one woman who lived across the street for them for 20 years, a neighbor named Helen Pasciolla.

HELEN PASCIOLLA: I heard that they were moving, and I saw Nikolas, and I said, oh, are you moving? And he said, yes. He said, we can't afford to live here anymore.

ROSE: And less than a year later in November of 2017, Cruz's mother, Lynda, went to the hospital complaining of the flu and died from pneumonia 3.

SHAPIRO: And what happened to Cruz after that?

ROSE: Cruz and his younger brother went to live with a family friend outside of Palm Beach, Fla., a woman named Roxanne Deschamps. But things were not going very well there. Cruz got into a fight with her son. That's when he called 911 in that tape that we heard earlier. Cruz actually talked about his mother with the 911 operator during that call.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CRUZ: The thing is, I lost my mother a couple days ago, so I - I'm dealing 4 with a bunch of things right now.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I understand.

ROSE: The woman that Cruz was staying with, Roxanne Deschamps - she also called 911 that day because she was afraid that Nikolas was going to come back to her house with a gun.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROXANNE DESCHAMPS: So I cannot have him on the premises 5 now. He put the gun on the head of his brother before, so it's not the first time. And he did that to his mom.

ROSE: The Palm Beach sheriff's deputy responded to that call and found Nikolas Cruz in a park and took him back to the house, where Nikolas Cruz apparently reconciled with Roxanne Deschamps and her son. The police report says that they hugged and that the case was cleared without any further action.

SHAPIRO: And on top of all of those warning signs, the FBI also got a tip just last month, in January of this year. What did that say?

ROSE: The caller talks about an Instagram post where Cruz wrote, quote, "I want to kill people." And she told the FBI, quote, "I know he's going to explode." And she worried about him getting into a school and shooting the place up. The FBI says that this tip should have been forwarded to its Miami field office but was not.

SHAPIRO: And after all of those warning signs, why didn't anyone intervene before the shooting?

ROSE: That's really the big, unanswered question in all of this. Lots of people are looking for the answers. The Broward Sheriff's Office is investigating how it handled the case. The school district is looking at the same thing. The Florida Legislature has launched an investigation 6. And on top of that, there's still the criminal investigation into the actual shooting itself.

And right now, the Florida legislature is looking at a package of limits on firearms, including one that would let police temporarily take away guns if the owner is deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. Although I should say that bill does not include a ban on high-powered semiautomatic rifles like the one that Cruz allegedly used in the shooting.

SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Joel Rose in Parkland, Fla. Thanks, Joel.

ROSE: You're welcome.