The 19-year-old – armed with an AR-15-style rifle – surrendered to police without a struggle following a deadly Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
A “troubled” 19-year-old gunman killed 17 people when he opened fire at a school in Florida yesterday.
The shooting, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, is now ranked as the second deadliest act of gun violence on a US public school campus.
The suspect, Nikolas Cruz, was arrested in a nearby community one mile from the school around an hour after the rampage.
CNN, citing law enforcement sources, said the gunman pulled the fire alarm and shot at staff and students before trying to blend in and leave among fleeing crowds.
The teen later surrendered to police without a struggle, officials said. He was armed with an AR-15-style rifle, multiple magazines of ammunition, a gas mask and smoke grenades.
And investigators looking at his social media posts have said: “Some of the things that have come to mind are very, very disturbing.”
‘Crazy about guns’
As a high school freshman, Cruz was part of the US military-sponsored Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corp programme at the school, according to Jillian Davis, 19, a recent graduate and former fellow JROTC member at Stoneman Douglas High.
In an interview with Reuters, Davis recalled his “strange talking sometimes about knives and guns” and said “no one ever took him seriously”.
Former classmate Eddie Bonilla told CBS Miami he knew Cruz before he got kicked out of school.
“He got kicked out of school last year,” said Bonilla. “He always had guns on him and stuff like that.
“Honestly a lot of people a lot of people were saying it was going to be him.
“We actually, a lot of kids threw jokes around Iike that, saying that he’s the one to shoot up the school, but it turns out everyone predicted it. It’s crazy.”
Chad Williams, 18, a senior at Stoneman Douglas, described Cruz as “kind of an outcast” who was known for unruly behavior at school, including a penchant for pulling false fire alarms, and was “crazy about guns”.