Book of Nikolas

Math teacher Jim Gard, who taught Cruz at Stoneman Douglas last year before he was expelled, said that at some point the school administration sent out a note with a vague suggestion of concern, asking teachers to keep an eye on Cruz. “I don’t recall the exact message,” Gard said, “but it was an email notice they sent out.”

“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” Gard told the Miami Herald. “There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”

Broward County Mayor Beam Furr told CNN that Cruz had been receiving treatment at a mental health clinic for a while, but that he had not been to the clinic for more than a year. “It wasn’t like there wasn’t concern for him,” Furr told CNN. “We try to keep our eyes out on those kids who aren’t connected. … In this case, we didn’t find a way to connect with this kid.”

Cruz apparently fell off the radar, but he was having a rough time.

Roger Cruz — who along with his wife, Lynda, had adopted Nikolas — died of a heart attack several years ago. Then in November, Lynda Cruz, 68, died of pneumonia, according to her sister-in-law Barbara KumbatovicWith her death, Cruz and his half brother lost one of the only relatives they had left, according to family members and friends.

“Lynda was very close to them,” Kumbatovic told The Post. “She put a lot of time and effort into those boys, trying to give them a good life and upbringing.”

One boy was quiet and seemed to stay out of trouble, but Nikolas kept having problems at school, Kumbatovic said.

“Lynda dealt with it like most parents did. She was probably too good to him,” Kumbatovic said. “She was a lovely woman. She was a hard-working woman. She made a beautiful home for them. She put a lot of effort and time into their schooling, their recreation, whatever they needed. She was a good parent. And she went over and above, because she needed to compensate for being a single parent.”

“I don’t think it had anything to do with his upbringing,” she said. “It could have been the loss of his mom. I don’t know.”After Lynda Cruz’s death, Nikolas Cruz and his half brother stayed with friends in Lake Worth, in Palm Beach County. Then he asked a former classmate from Stoneman Douglas High School whether he could move in with him. Cruz’s friend and his friend’s parents agreed and opened their home to him, said Jim Lewis, an attorney representing the family who took in Cruz. “It wasn’t working out” in Lake Worth, Lewis said.

“The family brought him into their home,” Lewis told The Post. “They got him a job at a local dollar store. They didn’t see anything that would suggest any violence. He was depressed, maybe a little quirky. But they never saw anything violent. … He was just a little depressed and seemed to be working through it.”Those who were acquainted with Cruz through school, such as Mutchler, had seen enough to disturb them in recent years.Joshua Charo, 16, a former classmate during their freshman year, told the Miami Herald that all Cruz would talk about “is guns, knives and hunting.” While Charo said Cruz joined the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as a freshman, he continued to be “into some weird stuff,” such as shooting rats with a BB gun.

Drew Fairchild, also a classmate during Cruz’s freshman year, agreed. “He used to have weird, random outbursts,” he told the Herald, “cursing at teachers. He was a troubled kid.”

He was suspended from Stoneman Douglas for fighting, Charo told the Herald, and because he was found with bullets in his backpack.

A classmate, Victoria Olvera, 17, told the Associated Press that Cruz was expelled last school year after a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend.

Officials would not comment on Cruz’s school record for privacy reasons. Broward County Sheriff Scott J. Israel said at a news conference that Cruz was ultimately expelled from Stoneman Douglas for “disciplinary reasons.”

He had since enrolled in a GED program, Lewis said.
When he moved in with his friend’s family, Cruz already owned the AR-15 rifle, Lewis said, noting that he was told that Cruz had bought it legally. “It was his gun. He had brought it to the house when he moved in. It was secured in a gun cabinet in the house, but he had the key to it. I believe it was secured in hisphotos were posted in July.

The day before the shooting, Cruz had gone to work at the dollar store, Lewis said. On most days, the father of the family with whom he was staying dropped Cruz off at his school. But Lewis said that on Wednesday, Cruz told the family something to the effect of: “I don’t go to school on Valentine’s Day.”

Authorities arrested Cruz not far from the house where he lived Wednesday afternoon, after a manhunt that transfixed the region and spread panic through many nearby schools.

Michael Nembhard, a retiree who lives in Coral Springs, said he saw police arrest Cruz just outside his house near Wyndham Lake Boulevard and Coral Ridge Drive. A little after 3 p.m., Nembhard was sitting in his garage watching the news on television with the door open when he heard an officer yell, “Get on the ground!”

When he looked up, he saw a teenager lying on the ground, wearing a burgundy hoodie and dark pants. “The cop had his gun drawn and pointed at him,” Nembhard said.

Nembhard said he thinks Cruz had been on foot when he was arrested. At first, Nembhard saw only the one officer and his police cruiser alongside the suspect on the ground with no other vehicles in sight. Within minutes, however, a swarm of officers and cruisers had descended on the quiet neighborhood.

From about 150 feet away, Nembhard watched as authorities handcuffed Cruz and put him into a police cruiser. A few minutes later, authorities put him into an ambulance.

David Weingrad reported from Long Island, N.Y.; Kevin Sullivan, in Parkland, Fla.; and Julie Tate, Jennifer Jenkins, Samantha Schmidt and Fred Barbash in Washington contributed to this report, which has been updated.