New Details About The Threatening Messages Nikolas Cruz Sent His Ex-Girlfriend — And Other Violent Warning Signs The Florida School Shooter's Classmates Witnessed
Cruz harassed her to the point where her family wasn't comfortable letting her go anywhere alone.
Getty / BuzzFeed The Parkland shooter was expelled for fighting and had an abusive relationship with his ex-girlfriend.
Nikolas Cruz admitted to committing the third largest mass shooting in America on Feb. 14 and is charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. Students who knew him said they weren’t surprised he shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because of his prior “erratic” behavior.
“The reason he got expelled was because he was fighting with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend,” Connor Dietrich, 17, a junior at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, told The New York Post.
“He stalked her and threatened her. He was like, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ and he would say awful things to her and harass her to the point I would walk her to the bus just to make sure she was OK. We all made sure she was never alone.”
Cruz’s ex-girlfriend declined to comment to BuzzFeed.
Dana Craig and her boyfriend, Matthew Rosario, Buzzfeed
Dana Craig, a student who was friends with the ex-girlfriend, said Cruz sent her threatening messages on Instagram, a report by BuzzFeed said.
“I’m going to get you and I’m going to kill you because you took this person away from me. I’m going to kill your family,” Craig recalled one of the messages saying.
Cruz was expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland for undisclosed “disciplinary reasons,” and there are conflicting reports as to the official reason.
The New York Times reported that he was kicked out of the school for carrying a knife to school.
Another report by The Washington Post said Cruz was expelled after a fight with the teenager his ex-girlfriend had begun dating.
Nikolas Cruz mugshot, Broward County Sheriff's Office
“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” said math teacher Jim Gard. “There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
Classmates of the suspected shooter were aware of his “troubled” behavior and claim to have reported him several times to school officials.
“He used to have weird, random outbursts, cursing at teachers,” Drew Fairchild, a Stoneman Douglas High student who previously shared a class with Cruz, told The Miami Herald. “He was a troubled kid.”
Multiple students confirmed to BuzzFeed that Cruz had indeed threatened his ex-girlfriend and the boy she was seeing.
Enea Sabadini, 17, the boy Cruz’s former girlfriend began dating, remembered Cruz posting threatening messages on his Instagram in 2017.
Screenshots of text from Cruz to Sabadini, Buzzfeed
Cruz wrote things like "Im going to watch ypu bleed," and "iam going to shoot you dead,” to Sabadini, claiming he “stole my ex.”
The first time Cruz tried to attack Sabadini he used racial slurs.
“While he was chasing me down the street, he also called me a n----r multiple times,” Enea said. “He was also trying to stab me with pencils.”
The second fight occurred in September 2016.
Sabadini said Cruz charged him in the school courtyard. Sabadini fought back and began punching Cruz in the face.
"I was just done," he told BuzzFeed.
Sabadini was upset after Trump insinuated the shooting could have been prevented if people had kept reporting Cruz.
“Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!” Trump tweeted after the shooting.
“Personally, I don’t think he should say that. [Trump] doesn’t know the whole story,” Sabadini told BuzzFeed News. “We tried.”
The students were adamant that he was a known threat to other’s safety.
"A lot of people were saying it was going to be him. A lot of kids threw jokes around saying that he was going to be the one to shoot up the school," an unnamed student told ABC7.
Sophia Serino, 17, told The New York Post that Cruz was “actually about to snap and plan this out and do it” during freshman year but a friend talked him out of it.
“It wasn’t something that was spontaneous. I think he really planned this,” Serino said.