At least 17 people are dead in a Florida school shooting
A former student of a South Florida high school stormed its campus armed with a semiautomatic assault rifle and opened fire, killing at least 17 people, according to authorities. The suspected shooter was later taken into custody.
Authorities identified the suspect as 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Cruz was carrying "countless" rifle magazines filled with ammo as he entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Police are still trying to determine what sparked the deadly shooting. The sheriff said Cruz had been expelled from the school over disciplinary issues.
Twelve people were killed inside the school and two died outside, according to Sheriff Israel. Another victim was found dead in the street, and two succumbed to their injuries at the hospital, he said. Another 14 people who sustained injuries in the shooting were being treated at hospitals. Five of them were listed in life-threatening condition as of Wednesday night.
Authorities said they would not be releasing the names of victims until all relatives had been notified, but the sheriff said a school football coach was among those killed in the shooting.
Follow our coverage as this story develops.
What we know about the suspected shooter
One former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas told us, “He was off. He was super stressed-out all the time and talked about guns a lot and tried to hide his face.” Another former student added that Cruz often said “how tired he was of everyone picking on him and the staff doing nothing about it.”
Identified as a threat
A math teacher at the school told the Miami Herald that Cruz had previously been identified as a potential threat to other students: “We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him.”
A student at the high school told a local TV station that “everyone predicted” something like the shooting and “threw jokes around like that, saying that he's the one to shoot up the school.”
The FBI was warned
In September, a YouTube user named Nikolas Cruz left a comment on a video stating, “I'm going to be a professional school shooter.” The video's creator alerted both the FBI and YouTube. Though the suspect’s name matches the YouTube user flagged, FBI officials would not say whether they have confirmed that the account belonged to Cruz.
Here’s everything else we know about the suspected shooter.
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