Former Rare Staff
Recent reports suggest that the man believed to be behind the fatal shooting of high school students in Florida had a disturbing relationship with his mother.
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Last week, authorities said 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Cruz was formerly a member of the school’s JROTC program. The shooting at the school marked the 25th American school shooting in which someone was killed since the devastating 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.
According to the New York Post, Cruz was said to have abused his adoptive mother, 68-year-old Lynda Cruz. More than 30 incident reports obtained by CNN stated that Cruz would throw anything he could find toward her. In one report, Cruz’s mother stated that she took away his Xbox after he refused to go to school, and in response, he threw “a chair, dog bowl and a drinking glass across the room.”
According to the reports, Cruz’s mother also once told Broward County Sheriff’s deputies that she was worried about her son, as he expressed interest in obtaining a gun and began “cutting his arms … to get attention.”
As Rare previously reported, Cruz’s mother passed away in 2017. She checked into a clinic last December after contracting the flu. She developed pneumonia after being rushed to the hospital and died as a result.
Cruz was also reported to have abused his high school ex-girlfriend. He was expelled from the school after getting into a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend.
RELATED: We now know chilling details about the Florida shooter’s activities before and after the massacre
