MIAMI — Here are five things to know about Nikolas Jacob Cruz, the suspect in Wednesday's murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the third largest school shooting in United States history.
The 19 year old allegedly responsible for the Valentine’s Day massacre at a Florida high school may have snapped after his mother died suddenly from the flu, according to family members. RELATED: FBI may have known months in advance that Florida shooting suspect had plans to be a “professional school shooter” Watch the video Nikolas Cruz was arrested and taken into custody Wednesday after taking his AR-15 rifle into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School...
CBS Sports Radio host Jim Rome on Thursday veered off topic to discuss Wednesday's mass shooting at Florida high school.
"This is a sports show," Rome said at the beginning his radio broadcast. "And everything I talk about here today pales in comparison to the murder of at least 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It's hard for me to care about the Lakers and the Pelicans or the Olympics or anything else in the world of sports."
He continued: "When you see that kind of horror and you see that kind of devastation, when you see children running for their lives, when you see parents in the kind of pain that no parent should ever, ever have to experience, when you here the story of an assistant football coach who was killed while protecting and helping students, reportedly using his own body to shield three of them."
Rome pointed to the remarks of Golden State head coach Steve Kerr, who summed up the shooting by slamming lawmakers who have refused to pass gun safety laws.
"We can do something about it," Kerr said. "We can vote people in who actually have the courage to protect people's lives and not just bow down to the NRA because they've financed their campaign. Hopefully we will find enough people with courage to help our citizens remain safe and focus on the real safety issues and not building some stupid wall."
Rome lamented the number of times he had been forced to discuss mass shootings on his sports show.
"The list goes on and on and on," he remarked. "And we all know what happens next. We know the drill because we've been here before. There's a mass murder in a school or a movie theater or at a concert. News crews set up, interviews are done, everybody says 'thoughts and prayers', we read about the people whose lives have been ripped away -- and then nothing changes."
"We say, 'never again,'" Rome said. "And then it happens again and again and again. How many times do we have to see this? How many kids need to be murdered in schools before we say enough is enough?"
Rome explained that he was focusing on the shooting instead of sports because he was not hosting "an ignorant show."
"I'm not going to sit here and say nothing because saying nothing and doing nothing leads to this happening again and again and again," the broadcaster insisted. "We've done nothing every single time and more and more people are dying. Our children are getting slaughtered."
Rome admitted that he did not have the solution to mass shootings.
"But I know what is not the answer: just saying thoughts and prayers," he said. "Something has to be done. This is not normal and we're allowing it to become normal."
Some of Rome's listeners suggested on Twitter that they had been caught off guard by the rant, but most approved.
Listen to the audio below.
Gun laws in Florida, which on Wednesday experienced one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, received a failing grade and need to be fixed to save lives, according to a study on Thursday from a center to prevent firearm violence.
The findings in an annual survey from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence also said U.S. states with strong gun safety laws have fewer average gun death than states with weaker laws.
The study was completed before a 19-year-old man who had been expelled from his Parkland, Florida, high school was charged with 17 counts of murder, after authorities say he opened fire at the school on Wednesday.
Florida, which also had one of the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history when a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, received a failing grade in the study for its gun laws.
To raise its grade, Florida could enact universal background checks, regulate firearm dealers and repeal its "Stand Your Ground," self-defense law that critics say allow people too much leeway to pull the trigger.
Half of all states received an F grade, according to the study.
"Year after year, our research shows that states that get serious about passing stronger gun violence prevention laws have a much better chance of reducing the number of deaths linked to
firearms," said Robyn Thomas, the center's executive director.
The powerful gun rights lobby, the National Rifle Association, has said the U.S. government should enforce existing gun laws and new ones are not needed.
When asked to comment on the Florida shooting, NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said: "We have a longstanding policy of not commenting until the facts are known."
Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott, who has supported gun ownership rights, told a news conference on Thursday he plans to speak soon with lawmakers on keeping schools safe and finding ways to make sure people with mental illness cannot access firearms.
"The violence has to stop," he said without mentioning any specific gun control policy proposals. His office was not immediately available for comment.
The Giffords Law Center study looked at firearms regulations and shooting death rates in all states.
It found of the 10 states with the lowest gun rate deaths, eight have some of the strongest gun laws: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey, California and Washington.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Bill Trott)
Florida Democratic Party Chairman Juan Cuba called out state Republican lawmakers on Thursday for a plan to discuss loosening background check laws just a day after 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
In a message posted to Facebook hours after the shooting, Cuba accuses Republicans of being "cowards bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association."
"Because FL Republicans are cowards bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association, they snuck in a gun provision inside of the Agriculture bill making its way through Tallahassee," Cuba writes. "SB740 is scheduled to be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee TOMORROW Thursday Feb. 15 at 1 PM."
Cuba noted that bill is intended to deal with "oyster harvesting, revising standards of water vending machines, and more."
"However, conveniently tucked in pages 88-90 of this 98 page bill is language that would require the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to grant a Concealed Weapons Permit applicant their permit within 90 days, even if a full background check has not been completed," he revealed. "No one should be granted a concealed weapons permit unless a full background check has been completed. That's just common sense."
Cuba concluded by calling on voters to contact their representatives "and ask that they remove this language from the bill."
At the time of publication, the bill had not been taken off the schedule to be discussed at 1 p.m. on Thursday.
(h/t: Grant Stern)
Broward Country Schools Superintendent Rob Runcie reacted to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Thursday by calling for a conversation on gun control.
At a press conference about the shooting that left 17 dead, Runcie explained that he had been getting calls from students asking for a discussion about "sensible" gun safety laws.
"Now is the time for this country to have a real conversation about sensible gun control," he said. "So our students are asking for that conversation."
"And I hope that we can get it done in this generation," Runcie added. "But if we don't, they will."
Watch the video clip below.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday accused Democrats of politicizing the latest school massacre and insisted that "evil" would always be present regardless of gun laws.
In an interview on Fox News, Cruz called the death of 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School "truly heartbreaking."
"Our prayers are with the families and all of those children who went through that horrible horror," Cruz said. "This horror shouldn't exist. And we don't know right now exactly why this deranged individual did this. I'm sure in the days to come we are going to find out more about what his motives were. But whatever they were, they were evil. And this is a horrible, horrible thing and our prayers are with those Florida families."
According to Cruz, a school massacre "could happen anywhere."
"We have seen that evil can occur whether in Parkland or in a church in Texas or in schools across the country," he insisted. "I mean, there are murderers. Evil is sadly always present and we need to do what we can to act to prevent it. Sometimes you see brave heroes who are able to step forward. Sometimes you have heroes that are armed and can engage the killer and stop them and save people's lives."
Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt noted that "Democrats are calling for gun control, they're talking about not allowing you to buy the AR-15 anymore."
"We have seen multiple shootings recently, mass shootings using this weapon," she said. "You're a parent, you have young girls who are going to grow up and go to school as well."
"The reaction of Democrats to any tragedy is to try to politicize it," Cruz complained. "They immediately start calling that we've got to take away the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens. That's not the right answer."
Cruz, who reportedly has taken more money from pro-gun groups than any member of Congress, said that victims of mass shootings have told him that "gun control is not the answer here."
"The answer is to focus on criminals, to focus on violent criminals," he remarked. "This individual appears to have significant issues with mental illness. I think we will certainly be asking were there signs of mental illness, could we have stepped in and prevented this before hand?"
Cruz also asserted that President Barack Obama shared the blame for a mass shooting that killed 26 at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
"Had the Obama administration simply followed federal law and enforced the law, existing gun laws made it illegal for the Sutherland Springs shooter to buy a gun," he opined. "But the Obama administration failed to report his criminal conviction so he wasn't in the background check system."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
A teacher who hid 19 students during a school massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School slammed lawmakers on Thursday for offering prayers to the vicitms instead of acting to prevent school shootings.
During an interview on the Today Show, host Hoda Kotb noted that teacher Melissa Falkowski had done everything correctly during the shooting but that alone could not prevent the death of 17.
"You did exactly what they told you," Kotb explained. "You knew the drills, you put the kids in the right place. And yet, this happened anyway."
"I've seen this on TV, we all have," Falkowski replied. "This shooting after shooting and there's always the same thing is said, 'It's not the time to talk about gun control, it's not the time. It's time to pray for the families.'"
"And I just think that hasn't gotten us anywhere," she continued, choking up. "I mean, here we are and we're like the latest statistic on school violence. And as a society, as Americans, we're failing our children. And we're not keeping them safe. And Congress is failing us and the government is failing us."
Falkowski concluded: "Something has to be done."
Watch the video below from NBC.
A Florida community will join together on Thursday to mourn the 17 victims of a suspected lone gunman as officials seek to discover how the heavily armed teenager managed to mingle with students before one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.
The ex-student, identified as Nikolas Cruz, 19, walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Wednesday shortly before classes ended and opened fire on students and teachers, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
Cruz was being held on 17 counts of premeditated murder, according to the Broward County Sheriff's website. It was not known when he would appear in court.
Cruz was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and had multiple ammunition magazines when he surrendered to officers in a nearby residential area, police said. He loved guns and was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons, police and former classmates said.
The shooting was the 18th in a U.S. school this year, according to gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.
It was the deadliest ever at an American high school, surpassing the 1999 rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher and then themselves.
It was also the second deadliest at a U.S. public school, after the 2012 massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman also killed his mother and himself.
Since Sandy Hook, U.S. schools have installed electronically controlled doors and added security staff.
"Our focus at the school district is certainly to find out from a safety perspective what's occurred," Marjory Stoneman Douglas High board member Donna Korn told Treasure Coast, a local newspaper group.
A law enforcement officer is assigned to every school in the district. The sheriff's office also provides active shooter training and schools have a single point of entry, she said.
"We’ve got the people prepared. We have prepared the campuses, but sometimes people still find a way to let these horrific things happen," Korn said.
Asked about having armed guards at school entrances, Israel told a news conference: "If a person is predisposed to commit such a horrific act ... there not a lot law enforcement or any entity can do about it."
'THE WORST IN HUMANITY'
The Valentine's Day bloodshed in the racially mixed community about 45 miles (72 km) north of Miami was the latest outbreak of gun violence that has become a regular occurrence at U.S. schools and college campuses in recent years.
Television footage showed students streaming out of the building with hands raised in the air, weaving their way between heavily armed, helmeted police officers as a fire truck and other emergency vehicles idled nearby.
Parents raced to the school of 3,300 students and a nearby hotel that was set up as a checkpoint to find their children.
"This has been a day we’ve seen the worst in humanity. Tomorrow (Thursday) is going to bring out the best in humanity as we come together to move forward from this unspeakable tragedy," Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie told a news conference.
The assailant wore a gas mask as he stalked into the school carrying a rifle, ammunition cartridges and smoke grenades, then pulled a fire alarm, prompting students and staff to pour from classrooms into hallways, according to Florida's two U.S. senators, who were brief by federal authorities.
The gunman tried to blend in with students who were fleeing the school but was spotted and taken into custody, the sheriff said in a statement.
A chilling cell phone video broadcast by CBS News showed what it said was the shooting in progress from inside a classroom. Several students were huddled or lying on the floor surrounded by mostly empty desks. A rapid series of loud gunshots are heard along with hysterical screaming.
One survivor, Kyle Yeoward, 16, said he and about 15 other students and a teacher hid in a closet for nearly two hours before police arrived.
The dead were a mix of students and adults. Twelve were killed inside the school, two just outside and one on the street, while two other victims died from their wounds in the hospital, Israel said.
GRAPHIC: Florida school shooting - https://tmsnrt.rs/2nX8ECo
(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by John Stonestreet and Jeffrey Benkoe)
At a Wednesday evening press conference on the shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the state would cover funeral expenses for the victims.
"It's a terrible tragedy, and sadly we've been here before," Bondi noted.
"I have five advocates headed in right now, I will have at least ten more tomorrow, driving in from all over the state," she promised.
"We will pay for the funeral expenses of these poor victims and do everything we can to help their families," Bondi continued.
"The state of Florida, we will pay for counseling for the surviving victims," she continued. "We will pay for students who need counseling."
The proposal received immediate criticism.
Vox writer Matthew Yglesias branded it the "Republican plan for mass shootings."
Igor Volsky, the deputy director of the CAP Action, also reminded of the Republican Attorney General's history.
Watch:
Comedian Michael Ian Black had a powerful statement in response to the latest school shooting to shock America.
"Deeper even than the gun problem is this: boys are broken," Black tweeted. "Until we fix men, we need to fix the gun problem."
"The last 50 years redefined womanhood: women were taught they can be anything. No commensurate movement for men who are still generally locked into the same rigid, outdated model of masculinity and it’s killing us," he continued.
"If you want to hurt a man, the first thing you do is attack his masculinity. Men don’t have the language to understand masculinity as anything other than some version of a caveman because no language exists," he noted. "The language of masculinity is hopelessly entwined with sexuality, and the language of sexuality in hopelessly entwined with power, agency, and self-worth."
"So men (and boys before that) don’t have language for modes of expression that don’t readily conform to traditional standards. To step outside those norms is to take a risk most of us are afraid to take. As a result, a lot of guys spend their lives terrified," Black suggested. "We’re terrified of being viewed as something other than men. We know ourselves to be men, but don’t know how to be our whole selves. A lot of us (me included) either shut off or experience deep shame or rage. Or all three. Again: men are terrified."
"Even talking about this topic invites ridicule because it’s so scary for most men (and women). Men are adrift and nobody is talking about it and nobody’s doing anything about it and it’s killing us," he concluded.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Wednesday called on President Donald Trump to publicly speak out against domestic abuse.
At a press conference on Wednesday, reporters reminded the Speaker that Trump has refused to publicly condemn former White House staffer Rob Porter for allegedly abusing his ex-wives and that the president has also declined to make a more generalized statement against domestic violence.
"Do you think the White House should publicly condemn domestic violence," MSNBC's Kasie Hunt asked Ryan. "Should the president?"
"Absolutely," Ryan replied. "Look, I can't speak for what [Rob Porter] did because I don't even know the answer to that. But clearly, clearly we should -- I mean, come one -- clearly we should all be condemning domestic violence. And if a person who commits domestic violence gets in the government, then there's a breakdown in the system. There's a breakdown in the vetting system. And that breakdown needs to be addressed."
Watch the video below from CBS News.
Five people, including a suspected gunman who apparently took his own life, were killed in a shooting spree at two locations in northeast Kentucky on Saturday, officials said.
Police received a 911 call about 4 p.m. about a shooting at a rural home near Paintsville, about 160 miles (260 km) southeast of Louisville, Ky., Johnson County Sheriff Dwayne Price said in a statement on Facebook.
Officers found two people dead there and began to search the area for the shooter, Price said in the statement. A second 911 call led deputies and police to an apartment in Paintsville, where three people were found fatally shot, including the gunman, the statement said.
"This has been a horrific murder spree," Price said. "There are no words to describe the heartbreak in seeing four lives taken due to the actions of one man. I have worked in law enforcement for 34 years. This is one of the most disturbing acts of violence I have ever seen."
Officials identified the gunman as Joseph Nickell, but no other information about him was made available.
The identities of the victims were not released pending notification of their relatives, officials said.
The Johnson County Sheriff's office and Paintsville police referred all questions to the Kentucky State Police, who were not immediately available for comment.
The shooting came about three weeks after the state was rocked by a high school shooting in Benton, Ky., where two students were killed and 18 students wounded by a fellow student, who remains in custody.
(Reporting by Rich McKay; Editing by Paul Tait)
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