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Nikolas Cruz announced his intentions to open fire at Stoneman Douglas in a chilling video shortly before the massacre.
The suspect in February’s massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School made disturbing cellphone videos announcing his intention to become the next school shooter, aiming to kill at least 20 people and saying “you’re all going to die.”
Nikolas Cruz introduces himself in the first video and says he is “going to be the next school shooter of 2018.” He goes on to say that he wants to use an AR-15 to kill at least 20 people and specifies the high school in Parkland.
“When you see me on the news you’ll know who I am,” Cruz says while laughing. Cruz recorded three separate clips on his cell phone.
“You’re all going to die. Pew pew pew. I can’t wait.”
The video clips were released by Florida prosecutors, according to the Miami Herald.
WARNING: The content in the video may be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
“I’m gonna go take Uber in the afternoon before 2:40 (p.m.). From there I’ll go into — onto school campus, walk up the stairs, unload my bags and get my AR and shoot people down at the man — what is it? — the main courtyard, wait, and people will die,” he says.
The 19-year-old former was identified as the suspect in the shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead and 15 others wounded. It was the third deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, after Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook.
Investigators discovered the videos on Cruz’s cellphone, which was taken into evidence after the shooting,
according to CNN. The videos are listed on the prosecution’s discovery list. Authorities didn’t say when the videos were recorded.
“He knew what he was doing,”
said Andrew Pollack, father of Meadow Pollack, a senior who was killed. Pollack said that Cruz won’t be able to claim at trial that he was insane or that he didn’t know what he was doing, CNN reports. “It’s all premeditated murder.”
Getty Nikolas Cruz is escorted into the courtroom for his arraignment at the Broward County Courthouse March 14, 2018 in in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Prosecutors announced on March 13 that they will seek the death penalty against Cruz, saying the crime “was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner” that was “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.” Cruz appeared in court March 14 where the victims’ emotional families saw him for the first time.
In the days following the mass shooting, law enforcement agencies and officers came under fire after news emerged that there was allegedly many red flags leading up to the massacre that were all essentially ignored and not acted upon.
The New York Times reported that a woman called the FBI a month before the shooting spree to warn authorities about Cruz. Cruz was allegedly violent since a young age, and that violence became more and more prevalent as he became a teenager.
According to CNN, neighbors were concerned about his behavior since he was 9-years-old, but as he grew up “he showed a propensity for violence toward small animals, expressed enthusiasm about guns and knives and even began introducing himself as “a school shooter.”
He displayed the same sort of violence toward his classmates, before he was expelled from school. According to CNN, Emma Gonzalez, one of Cruz’s classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said in a speech that his peers reported his behavior “time and time again.”
“Since he was in middle school,” she said, “it was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter.”
