PARKLAND, FLA. (WSVN) - 7News visited the home where the Parkland high school shooter once lived, as new details about him have been uncovered.
The entire area near the house where 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz most recently lived was closed off by police until Friday. Cruz was living at that house just before he decided to walk out of it armed with an AR-15 and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The public defender’s office released new information Friday stating that Cruz will plead guilty if the State Attorney’s Office agrees not to seek the death penalty.
An American flag could be seen flying at half staff at the house where Cruz formerly lived.
A woman closed the gate as she saw 7News crews. She did not want to comment.
Investigators have since searched the house and an attorney for the family Cruz was living with said they did not suspect that he was dangerous.
A video shot last year has surfaced of Cruz in the backyard of a previous house shirtless and shooting what appears to be a BB gun.
According to CNN, the shooter had bought five guns over the last year.
A call log was also obtained which showed that police responded to Cruz’s former Parkland house 39 times between 2011 and 2016.
According to BuzzFeed News, police reports had called Cruz and his brother erratic and violent. They said the report also stated Cruz threw items and was out of control.
BuzzFeed also reported that one deputy noted that Cruz suffered from mental illness, had been cutting his arms for attention and had mentioned in the past that he wanted to purchase a firearm.
“Thirty-nine times is an unacceptable number,” said student Jaclyn Corin. “Once or twice, but I don’t know how they just left it be.”
Corin was inside Stoneman Douglas High School when Cruz began to shoot.
She said she’s known him for years and tutored him.
“My teacher had asked me to tutor a boy named Nikolas Cruz because I was good at math, and he was having trouble with math,” Corin said.
She also confessed that he bullied her. “He called me a slut. He called me a whore. Never met this kid in my entire life,” Corin said. “I had never dealt with someone just saying that rude of terms towards me. It was just unbelievable.”
Other former classmates of Cruz said he was a loner and had isolated himself after his parents died.
“Eventually, after a couple months, he started talking again, but he couldn’t fit back in correctly,” said Ethan Trieu, who knew the suspect. “He met the wrong people.”
On social media, Cruz’s profile showed many pictures of guns. CNN also said that according to Instagram messages, the shooter was racist and he hated immigrants, gays and Jews.
Cruz was also in an air-rifle marksmanship program, which was supported by a grant from the National Rifle Association.
“We stigmatized him as the school shooter type,” said Erin Kalidyn, who knew Cruz. “You just never thought that he would do that.”
Although police responded 39 times to Cruz’s house, he was not arrested up until this school shooting.
At school, Cruz also had an extensive disciplinary record.
Israel said that they are looking into the record and the calls.
“A call for service simply means that our dispatch center received a call,” Israel said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean we went out on something. It could have been a telephonic contact with a deputy, from a person from another state or we might have gone out there.”
According to 7News affiliate WPTV in West Palm Beach, Cruz’s brother has since been involuntarily Baker Acted, Friday. He is now in a mental institution.
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