Cruz is charged with 17 counts of murder in Florida shooting

Authorities on Thursday charged a 19-year-old man who is suspected of gunning down students and adults at his former high school with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

The suspect, Nikolas Cruz, was booked into jail in Broward County. He had been expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a small, bucolic city about an hour north of Miami, which on Wednesday became the site of one of the deadliest shootings in modern U.S. history, adding to the growing toll of mass killings on school grounds.

“This is catastrophic,” said Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County, who has three children who graduated from the school. “There really are no words.”

Authorities said the AR-15 rifle that Cruz used in the attack was purchased legally. “No laws were violated in the procurement of this weapon,” said Peter J. Forcelli, special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Miami.

President Donald Trump is expected to address the nation at 11 a.m.

Videos taken from inside the school captured the terror as students crouched for shelter, screaming as the sound of gunfire rang out near them.

With the Parkland shooting, three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history have come in the last five months.

— The gunman said ‘I don’t go to school on Valentine’s Day,’ according to a lawyer.

On weekday mornings, Cruz usually got up to catch a ride to the adult education courses that the family he had stayed with after his mother’s death last year had encouraged him to attend, the family’s lawyer, Jim Lewis, told CNN. But on Wednesday, he refused to get up, Lewis said.

Lewis said that Cruz explained his reluctance by saying something to the effect of “It’s Valentine’s Day. I don’t go to school on Valentine’s Day.”

He had been staying with the family since November, the month his mother, Lynda Cruz, died. Lewis said that the family had seen signs of depression in Cruz, but nothing indicated that he was capable of this kind of violence. The family had allowed Cruz to bring his gun with him to their house, insisting that he keep it in a lockbox.

“This family did what they thought was right, which was take in a troubled kid and try to help him,” he said.

That included Lewis encouraging Cruz to attend adult education courses and work toward his GED. As the months wore on, the family thought his mood seemed to be improving. Though they were aware that he had had disciplinary problems at his former school and there were some indications that he had been bullied, he had never shared contempt for the school or anyone there with them.

The family also had a son who was at Marjory Stoneman Douglas during the shooting, Lewis said. The son and Cruz had texted earlier in the day, but the texts did not contain anything out of the ordinary.

In the hours after the shooting, people who knew Cruz described him as a “troubled kid” who enjoyed showing off his firearms, bragging about killing animals and whose mother would resort to calling police to have them come to their home to try to talk some sense into him.

— The president calls the gunman ‘mentally disturbed.’

Trump, in a Twitter post early Thursday, said that people should report anyone behaving like Cruz to authorities.

“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior,” Trump said. “Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”

In a statement Thursday, Trump called for the American flag to fly at half-staff at the White House and other public buildings and grounds as a sign of respect for the shooting victims. “Our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones” in the Florida shooting, he said.

— Democrats are repeating their calls for tougher gun legislation.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., disputed Trump’s gesture toward mental health, pointing out the high rates of gun violence in the United States compared with other countries.

In an appearance on CNN, Blumenthal said that after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, Connecticut worked to cut down on gun violence by passing measures to ban assault weapons and increase background checks.

But he said that even states that had worked to improve gun safety were vulnerable. “We are at the mercy of the weakest states, even when we have the strongest gun laws,” he said.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, in an appearance on CNN, railed against the inability of his state to pass effective legislation to help prevent attacks like the one Wednesday. He pointed out that, with the Pulse shooting in Orlando that killed 49 and a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport that killed five, it was the third mass shooting attack in the last couple of years in Florida alone.

“We’ve been through this a lot and each time we say enough is enough and then of course it isn’t enough,” he said. — ‘If I don’t make it, I love you,’ a student tells her mother.

Many students used their phones to keep their parents informed about what was happening, and to document some of the violence that was unfolding around them.

Sarah Crescitelli, a freshman, was in drama class rehearsing for a musical when gunshots rang out.

Hiding in a sweltering storage room with about 40 other students, she typed out a text message to her mother, Stacy, for what she thought might be the last time.

“If I don’t make it,” she wrote, “I love you and I appreciate everything you did for me.”

— The shooting adds to a grim toll at schools across the nation.

When a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults with an assault rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, it rattled Newtown, Connecticut, and reverberated across the world. Since then, there have been at least 273 school shootings nationwide. In those incidents, 439 people were shot, 121 of whom were killed.