Nikolas Cruz was reported 30 times to police over alleged assaults on his mother
ALLEGED Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz would throw chairs, a dog bowl, a drinking glass — seemingly anything he could get his hands on — during violent assaults on his adopted mother, according to details of the more than 30 police incident reports revealed Saturday.
Once, the teen even hit his mom, Lynda Cruz, with a vacuum cleaner hose, and cruelly called her “a useless b***h” according to the reports, obtained by CNN.
Police were called to the home most recently in September 2016, months before the mom, Cruz, and his little brother moved from the quiet, prosperous neighbourhood of Parkland, Broward County, reports the New York Post.
One report in particular, from January 15, 2013, stands out for showing the then-14-year-old’s volatile temper.
The woman told police that when Cruz refused to go to school that day, she took away his Xbox “privileges,” hiding the game system away in her vehicle.
Enraged, Cruz “retaliated and threw a chair, dog bowl and a drinking glass across the room,” she told cops, according to the report.
Cruz called her “a useless b***h,” along with other profanities she declined to share with the police.
During that visit, Cruz’s mother also told police that he had a “history of developmental and learning disabilities,” including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and was “increasingly irate”.
Cruz was cuffed and seated in the back of a police car as the police interviewed his mother, CNN reported.
A counsellor from the nearby behavioural health facility where Cruz had been a client for years showed up and “gave Nikolas his prescribed medication,” the report said, after which the boy “began to calm down and co-operated”.
Four days after Cruz’s 18th birthday, Lynda Cruz called the Broward County Sheriff’s deputies because they’d been fighting over the paperwork Cruz needed to get a Florida State identification card.
The mother was worried, she said then, because he’d mentioned wanting to get a gun — and had started “cutting his arms … to get attention.”
The long and frequent history of police reports was just another warning sign of a teen on the downslope to a deadly rampage.
Other neighbours have described him abusing animals, including setting his family’s dog on another neighbour’s piglets, or shooting at their chickens with a B.B. or pellet gun, according to the Miami Herald.
Lynda Cruz died in November from complications from the flu.
OTHER DISTURBING TRAITS OF THE SCHOOL SHOOTER
Nikolas Cruz didn’t know how to use a microwave, didn’t pick up after himself and didn’t know how to do his own laundry, according to the Snead family, who took Cruz in following his mother’s death.
Florida’s Sun Sentinel published a story on Sunday about the family, who said that what Cruz did baffles them.
They made Cruz buy a locking gun safe to put in his room the day he moved in. Cruz had a handful of guns, including the AR-15 and two other rifles that would be considered assault rifles.
Cruz, a hunter, also had knives, BB guns and pellet guns.
James Snead thought he had the only key to the cabinet but has figured out Cruz must have kept a key for himself.
The family kept their own rifles, bought after a burglary a couple of years ago, in a separate locked cabinet. They told Cruz he needed to ask permission to take out the guns.
He had asked only twice since November. They said “yes” once and “no” once.
Cruz’s school records also reveal a child that had problems since middle school.
According to records obtained on Sunday from the state Department of Children and Families, when Cruz was a student at Westglades Middle School, he was constantly in trouble for insulting teachers and staff, using profanity, disruptive behaviour, unexcused absences and at least one fight.
His mother was called in more than a dozen times for conferences and Cruz was frequently sent to counselling.
