Students worry about missed warning signs before Florida school shooting

PARKLAND, Fla. – In the wake of another school shooting, people who knew the suspect are concerned about potential warning signs that were missed.

Nikolas Cruz is accused of killing at least 17 people and injuring more than a dozen more when he went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida armed with an AR-15-type gun.

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Students say they'd discussed the possibility that 19-year-old Cruz could be violent, some saying they'd even joked he'd be the type to cause bloodshed at their school, but after realizing that horror, those potential missed warning signs are just chilling.

"He got kicked out of school last year, a lot of people, he always had guns on him and stuff like that,” one student said.

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Many said they knew he was troubled, but never could have anticipated this much carnage.

"He carried multiple guns, he showed me his guns. Actually, I was kicked out of school myself and I saw what guns he had, he showed me personally, and a lot of time, the kids wouldn't pick on him, because, they knew what could go on. They were scared at times,” one former student said.

Investigators say Cruz had been expelled from the school for disciplinary reasons.

"Honestly, a lot of people were saying it was going to be him, stuff like that, we actually, a lot of kid through jokes around like that, that he was going to be the one to shoot up the school.  It turns out that everyone predicted it. That's crazy,” one student said.

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And that's not where the potential warning signs end. Investigators are combing Cruz's social media pages say they found evidence of violence.

"We've already began to dissect his websites and things that social media he was on and some of the things that come to mind are very, very disturbing,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.

That violence, paired with his knowledge of the school layout and schedules, might have helped Cruz, allegedly armed with at least one rifle and multiple magazines, become capable of as deadly a rampage as possible.

“The senior parking lot is right where this went down and the exit to where you walk to where people go home or to their bike is also in that area. So there's going to be a large mass of people at that time,” a former student said.

Cox Media Group