At 2:19 p.m. on Wednesday, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz walked into the high school from which he’d been expelled the previous year and opened fire on students and faculty with an AR-15 he purchased legally a few months earlier. Before escaping by blending in with students evacuating the campus, Cruz had murdered 17 people. He was apprehended less than two hours later in a nearby neighborhood, where he was found in a state of “labored breathing” intense enough to warrant sending him to the hospital before police interrogated him. His heinous crime was the third worst school shooting in the country’s history.
As more details have emerged, the nation is left asking if this could have been prevented. Should we require armed security at all schools? Are there any sensible gun laws that could have actually prevented Cruz from purchasing the rifle? And were there any warning signs that could have alerted friends, family and/or authorities about the threat Cruz posed? The answer to the latter is, yes, there were several. Below is a list of six warning signs, in no particular order, that Cruz was on a path to violence.
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