Calculated killer or psychopath? Parkland shooter kept drawings of bullets’

When the Parkland school shooter set out on his death rampage, he was armed not only with an AR-15 rifle but with layouts of the building he intended to attack and estimates of the paths that his bullets would follow.

It showed how far the 19-year-old former student went to plan the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook.

“Sketch, diagrams of the trajectories were done for each hallway and each classroom on the first floor,” a newly released police report states.

Same for the second floor and the third.

No more specifics were given about the plans, which were found in a rifle case Nikolas Cruz ditched in a stairwell of the 1200 building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High after he shot 34 people, killing 17 of them.

In another stairwell, authorities found Cruz’s Smith and Wesson rifle and a tactical vest. In the vest was a Nassau County police-issued ID for Roger P. Cruz, the shooter’s long-dead father.

The previously unreported details were included in a 425-page report written by the murder case’s lead Detective John Curcio, of the Broward Sheriff’s Office. The document was released Thursday by prosecutors under Florida’s public records law.

The report summarizes the crime, interactions with Cruz, and witness statements and indicates that police believe Cruz put advance thought into the attack and was not delusional.

Among the findings: Cruz’s phone contained screen shots of the high school’s class and bell dismissal schedule, diagrams for proper trigger-finger placement and locations of vital organs for shot patterns.

Police months ago released chilling cellphone videos Cruz made shortly before the shooting, in which he discusses “the plan,” to take an Uber to campus, “walk up the stairs unload my bags and get my AR and shoot people down at the main ... courtyard.” Cruz tried to shoot out the third-story windows, but was unsuccessful.

The report released Thursday shows the detective thought Cruz was bluffing during questioning when he talked of hearing voices and being tormented by a demon.

A month before the shooting, Cruz turned to Quora, an online question-and-answer site, to ask about psychological behavior.

“I am neurotypical. How can I pretend to be a psychopath and get diagnosed as one?” Cruz asked.

Assistant Public Defender Gordon Weekes declined comment Thursday on Cruz’s mental state, saying the now 20-year-old is prepared to plead guilty and serve multiple life terms, sparing the community an emotionally grueling trial. In return, defense lawyers are asking that the state not seek the death penalty.

Cruz’s demeanor and statements will be key to both sides. After gunning down classmates as young as 14 and two coaches he knew, Cruz ran from the school alongside other fleeing students. He went to a nearby Subway inside a Walmart, where he ordered a cherry blue raspberry Slurpee. A clerk told police Cruz seemed calmer than all the other students inside the store, who had hotfooted it out of the school.

A policeman caught Cruz about an hour after the shooting, walking down a residential street. He acted “calm and rational,” while waiting for a school security guard to come to the scene to identify him, the detective’s report states.

“Cruz then began to claim he was hearing voices of a demon and began to throw up,” Curcio’s report states. At one point he said: “Where the f--- am I?” and “What happened?” He was heard crying.

Paramedics took Cruz to Broward Health North. He gave medical staff his name, date of birth and even told them he was allergic to penicillin. Doctors found no illicit drugs or alcohol in his system.

Cruz claimed he was suicidal.

But a doctor quickly determined there was “nothing medically wrong” with him and released him to police.

Cruz was still in a hospital gown when they took him to the Broward Sheriff’s Office headquarters in Fort Lauderdale.

While alone in an interview room, Cruz scanned the ceiling and walls for hidden cameras, Curcio wrote.

Seemingly “playing” for the camera, Cruz mimicked shooting himself in the head, mouth and chest. He even punched himself, repeatedly. But “not hard enough to cause any injuries,” the report said.

Cruz claimed he couldn’t remember his phone number, bizarrely pulled a medical lead off his side and chewed on it and at one point in the lengthy interview, was so relaxed he fell asleep.

And “then in what appears to be an ‘act’ starts to hyperventilate,” Curcio’s report said. The detective challenged Cruz and said he didn’t believe him. Suddenly, Cruz remembered his complete phone number, his brother’s name and the circumstances of his parents deaths. His mom had died a couple months earlier of pneumonia.

Cruz spoke of a “demon” and the voices that told him daily to “burn, kill and destroy.” But when Cruz’s brother joined him in the interview room, his brother seemed confused and asked: “What do you mean demons?”

As a toddler, Cruz was diagnosed as developmentally delayed. He had trouble communicating and understanding many words. He crawled on all fours and growled, identifying as an animal, school records show.

Cruz’s troubles began early on. In middle school he was sent to a school for children with emotional and behavioral disorders. According to his mother Cruz was autistic compounded by attention deficit-hyperactivity and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Classmates were fearful of him and reported his aggressive, threatening behavior and fascination with death, violence and gruesome photos.

In the run-up to the shooting, Cruz tuned in to violent music, police-shooting videos and Quora to hype himself up for his death mission, a search of his cellphone showed. He also watched a police department’s training video about how to respond to an active shooter.

Cruz also bombarded a 15-year-old Coral Springs girl with pleas for attention, a relationship, and love. She was listed in Cruz’s contacts as “Warning Love Of Your Life.”

Scared students who hid during the shooting told police that as the shooter went down the hallways trying locked classroom doors they could hear him yelling and talking to himself.

“Round them up” and “block the exits,” one student reported hearing him yell.

A student in Scott Biegel’s class on the third floor said he saw his teacher get shot and fall as smoke filled the air. The shooter shouted for people to ‘open the door’ and appeared to be talking about his dead mother, saying: “No mom why?” that student said.

And yet another, this one in Room 1217, said the shooter tried the classroom’s door knob and in a “very calm” tone said: “This door is locked, I’m going to try another door.”

Among the many phone calls Cruz missed on the day of the shooting were two from a woman at Henderson Behavioral Health, a treatment center for people with mental illness. She had worked with the family before but did not realize Cruz’s mother had died.

Raquel Callister was calling to “offer her support,” records show.

The calls came in at 2:26 p.m. and 5:57 p.m.

Cruz had started shooting at 2:21 pm.

From:https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-ne-curcio-report-parkland-20181220-story.html
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