Remember the desperate spin by the New York Daily News and others who crowed that Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School shooter Nikolas Cruz was “trained by the NRA,” because the NRA provided funding to the school’s JROTC program?
The Florida shooting suspect was on an NRA-funded school rifle team https://t.co/6pZqrtZMRD
An early look at Saturday's front… pic.twitter.com/kqi7fd6G9J
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 17, 2018
The South Florida Sun Sentinel published a must-read piece on Friday that compiles many of the warning signs that were either missed or ignored before the mass shooting that killed 17. Spoiler: the NRA has nothing to do with any of them.
School officials worried about Nikolas Cruz and guns 18 months before mass shooting – Sun Sentinel https://t.co/xJRD8gCyMj
— South Florida Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) March 17, 2018
About that JROTC thing? Rafael Olmeda reports that “staff were so worried about his fascination with guns that they banned him from practicing shooting skills with the JROTC” 18 months before the mass shooting.
What else? “A safety plan created by the school for Cruz in September 2016 also prohibited him from carrying a backpack on campus.”
And there’s so much more:
A psychiatric memo dated 2014 from the alternative Cross Creek School that Cruz attended in eighth grade describes him as “moody, impulsive, angry, attention seeking, annoys others on purpose and threatens to hurt others.…”
…
But the bulk of the documents focus on a one-week period in September 2016, when the Sheriff’s Office, DCF and mental health officials were investigating claims that Cruz posed, at least, a threat to himself.
Despite the repeated visits, neither the Broward Sheriff’s Office nor Henderson Behavioral Health, a mental health clinic in Davie that treated him for two years, ordered Cruz hospitalized for observation under the state’s Baker Act, which allows intervention when a person is deemed to be a danger to himself or others.
A Henderson social worker arrived at the Cruz home Sept. 23, the day before he turned 18, after his mother, Lynda, told school officials he “was punching holes in the wall and verbally aggressive,” according to one report.
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In another report, “the resource officer at Stoneman Douglas and two school counselors relayed an allegation that Cruz drank gasoline in a suicide attempt, cut himself and ‘that he had a gun at home and was thinking of using it.'”
The school resource officer, a Broward sheriff’s deputy, promised to search Cruz’s home for a gun, according to the mental status assessment on Sept. 28, 2016. A sheriff’s report from the same date mentions no search for a gun, indicating only that Cruz wanted to buy one. The deputy who filed the report confirmed that Henderson and DCF were at the visit and said Cruz showed no signs of mental illness or criminal activity.
And get this: Can we blame the adult in the house for missing some really obvious signs?
…a mental health counselor visited Cruz at his Parkland home because a guidance counselor was troubled that he wrote the word “kill” in a notebook because he was upset with his mother.
“I was angry then,” he told the counselor, Anna Del Barrio. “But I wouldn’t hurt my mom.”
Cruz told a school therapist that his argument with his mother was over her refusal to take him to get a state issued ID, which he would have needed to buy a gun.
But Lynda Cruz told Del Barrio that she had no worries about her son as a gun owner.
“I’m not concerned and I’m not afraid,” she said, according to Del Barrio’s report. “My son has pellet guns and he’s always respected the rules of where they can and can’t be used.”
Unreal. https://t.co/bTlpHf9y7V
— Erik (@winefishdawg) March 17, 2018
https://twitter.com/jasonelevation/status/975090380617154560
So… The NRA had nothing to do with it… Correct? Just waiting for a news outlet to admit that they're falsely targeting that organization.. https://t.co/I0fCfvbKxm
— Isaac McInerney (@IMcInerney621) March 17, 2018
Read also Twitchy’s report that the school had adopted a lenient, Obama-era school disciplinary policy “to reduce racial ‘disparities’ in suspensions and expulsions.”
Nikolas Cruz disciplined for assault, threatening teachers & carrying bullets in backpack. But school policy kept such cases from police so kids wouldn’t get records. With no record, he passed gun background check. https://t.co/JLAGQA8BHL
— Drew Cline (@DrewHampshire) March 1, 2018
Related:
ICYMI ==> 'Amazing smear': NY Daily News gets CLOBBERED for 'vile and misleading' spin connecting NRA to school shooter https://t.co/NybArhx1qG
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) February 17, 2018
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