Breaking: Active shooter at Florida high school, at least 20 injured; Update: Suspect in custody; Update: Banned from campus? Update: At least 17 dead; Update: "The kid was crazy"; Update: Coach stepped in front of bullets; Update: Photo

“Injured” is WSVN’s term. I think they mean wounded.

Regardless, this sounds very, very bad even by the standards of these inevitably horrific incidents.

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The “person of interest” is indeed a student although he hasn’t been named yet. He’s “on the run” at last check as I write this at 3:30 ET. Here’s the live feed from WSVN. Stand by for updates.

Update: A student being interviewed says he’s not surprised that the accused shooter did this, and that he was known to have access to guns. Hmmm.

Update: An eventful day at school.

https://twitter.com/TheCaptainAidan/status/963865696643026944

At least one person is dead according to the local fire chief. He says there could be up to 50 victims.

Update: Here’s the student I mentioned above describing the shooter.

Update: They’ve got the shooter, presumably alive.

Update: Everyone’s waiting for the number now. And it will probably be worse than we all expect.

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Update: If you’ve wondered what it might be like to be trapped in this nightmare, wonder no more. I lost count here after 20 shots.

Update: At least 14 victims, says the sheriff. The shooter is indeed alive too. There was helicopter footage earlier of cops loading him into a squad car.

Update: The Miami Herald has a name but apparently based on only one police source. Exercise caution until it’s formally confirmed.

The 19-year-old ex-student, who has been detained by Broward police, has not been publicly identified as a suspect. But a law-enforcement source identified him as Nicolas Cruz.

“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” said math teacher Jim Gard, who said Cruz had been in his class last year. “There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”

Note his age. Being 18 or older, he’s eligible for the death penalty.

Update: Gard told the Miami Herald that he believes an email went out last year to teachers notifying them that Cruz had been barred from campus with a backpack. How’d he get on campus today, then? Imagine the potential liability here.

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Relatedly, how overt were these threats that the school worried specifically about him carrying a backpack? When it’s reached that stage, presumably police intervention is in order. Did the cops ever look into Cruz for threatening the school?

Update: Yes, it’s very, very bad.

Thirteen people died in the Columbine massacre, not including the two shooters themselves. This is already worse and the death toll will probably only increase.

Update: And now the death toll is 17.

Update: Cruz was expelled for “disciplinary reasons.”

Update: The grim benchmarks:

Update: Lotta mental-health red flags on Cruz according to people who knew him:

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Some of the current students told authorities they knew the suspect, Milton reports. Student Brandon Minoff, speaking with CBSN, said he had had classes with the suspected shooter. Minoff described the suspect as a “strange kid.”

Another student told CBS News about the suspect, “The kid was crazy. I had engineering with him a couple years ago and he wasn’t allowed to come to school with a backpack and he would threaten students and break glass and get into fights so he got kicked out of school.”

Update: Unimaginable courage, per the Miami Herald:

When a shooter opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County on Wednesday afternoon, reports emerged — persistent but unconfirmed by authorities as of early evening — of a football coach and security guard jumping in front of students to protect them from the shooter.

Coach Aaron Feis was initially said to be dead, eliciting tributes on social media. Subsequent posts said he was wounded but had survived the shooting.

Update: Here’s the monster at the moment police grabbed him.

Update: Information on the shooter is beginning to trickle into the media. I’ll leave you with two profiles of him. First, the Times:

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In the interview with the Miami news station, the student said Mr. Cruz was a junior at Douglas High School when he was expelled last year. He said that students would joke that if anyone were to open fire inside the school, it would be Mr. Cruz. Because of that, students feared him and mostly stayed away from him, the student said.

“A lot of people were saying that it would be him,” the student told WFOR-TV. “They would say he would be the one to shoot up the school. Everyone predicted it.”

And the second from the Daily Beast:

Cruz always had his hair short and had a penchant for wearing patriotic shirts that “seemed really extreme, like hating on” Islam, Parodie said. The suspected gunman would also deride Muslims as “terrorists and bombers.”

“I’ve seen him wear a Trump hat,” the student said.

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David Strom 7:20 PM | December 20, 2024
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