FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A young man with a troubled home life, who felt bullied at school and developed an obsession with guns, easily walked onto a school campus where he murdered students and staff with a legally purchased AR-15 style rifle.
That’s the horrific story of the killer who murdered 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. It’s also the story of a local tragedy.
The profile of the 18-year-old Texas murderer is eerily similar to that of a 19-year-old who entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018, killing 14 students and three coaches while injuring 17 others.
The Texas gunman, Salvador Ramos, was killed by law enforcement at the school. The Parkland killer, Nikolas Cruz, fled the building and was arrested off-campus. He pleaded guilty to the murders, and jury selection is now underway to decide if he’ll be put to death.
It’s hard to make any kind of definitive conclusions about a “typical” school shooter, since the sample size is still relatively small, school safety expert Kenneth Trump said. But a similar profile is emerging.
“It seems to be disconnected kids,” said Trump, president of the Cleveland based-National School Safety and Security Services, “Disconnected from their peers. Disconnected from their family. Dysfunction in their homes.”
Fascination with guns
One glaring similarity between the Parkland and Uvalde shooters is their intense interest in guns and other weapons.
About a year ago, the Texas gunman posted on social media photos of automatic rifles that “he would have on his wish list,” a childhood friend told the Washington Post. Three days before the shooting, he posted images of two AR-15 rifles he referred to as “my gun pics,” the Post reported.
The Parkland shooter had posted photographs of himself on social media wearing gas masks and body armor while holding weapons, according to a 2019 report from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, which investigated the shooting.
“Several witnesses spoke of seeing Cruz’s social media posts, which showed him with firearms or knives,” the report said. “He was also known to bring knives to school, and some witnesses saw Cruz’s guns (off-campus) first-hand. One student saw Cruz looking up on a school computer how to make a nail bomb.”
The Parkland shooter’s web history revealed he had visited sites devoted to the 1999 Columbine massacre, videos of dogs killing rabbits, gun-range videos and scenes from violent movies. His phone included the song, “Pumped Up Kicks,” about a school shooting, and his brother told a detective he “acts like he’s shooting stuff” while the song played in the background.
Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who chairs the Stoneman Douglas Commission, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he didn’t have first-hand information about the Texas case. But he cautioned against making broad assumptions about someone who posts photos of weapons, saying many people treat firearms as a sport.
“Because someone posts a picture of themselves with a gun, to say that’s dangerous in and of itself or that they’ve done something wrong is not accurate,” he said. “For some people, posing for a picture on Instagram with a gun is no different than posing with a baseball glove.”
Legally purchased
Both killers appeared eager to buy a gun as soon as it was legal. Florida law at the time required people be 18 to own a gun, which is the same as the current law in Texas. Florida raised the limit to 21 after the Parkland shootings.
The Texas killer legally bought the weapons and ammunition he’d use in the rampage within a couple of days after turning 18, according to reports.
Cruz received a Florida identification card, which enabled him to buy guns, a few days after his 18th birthday in September 2016. Two months later, he bought his first shotgun, and in February 2017, he purchased the Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifle that he’d use in the killing a year later. He also bought five other guns, according to the safety commission’s report.
Warning signs, but no criminal record
Laws in Florida and Texas restrict gun ownership for people who have committed certain crimes, but the Parkland shooter had no criminal record, and there’s no indication the Texas killer had one either.
Cruz committed offenses that could have resulted in arrests, but a combination of lenient discipline policies in the Broward school district, victims declining to press charges, poor communications between agencies, and missteps by law enforcement gave him a clean record prior to the massacre. The Broward Sheriff’s Office and the FBI both failed to act on tips that Cruz might be planning a school shooting.
A neighbor reported Cruz shot her chickens with an airsoft gun, and one of them died, but she did not pursue charges after learning he was developmentally delayed, according to the commission report.
He also vandalized a school bathroom and was supposed to attend an alternative-to-arrest program but never completed it for reasons the school district could never explain.
A picture of the Texas shooter’s history is just starting to emerge. A childhood friend said Ramos “drove around with another friend at night sometimes and shot at random people with a BB gun. He also egged people’s cars,” the Washington Post reported.
Police confirmed that Ramos posted in a private Facebook message shortly before the killing that he had shot his grandmother and planned to shoot up an elementary school. The messages were discovered after the shooting.
The Parkland killer made a video on his cellphone bragging, “I’m going to be the next school shooter.” It was discovered after the shooting.
Troubled home and school life
Both teens had a difficult life at home and school, according to witnesses and investigators.
At the time of the shooting, Ramos and his mother were living with his grandmother, but she was evicting his mother because of drug problems, the Washington Post reported.
Cruz watched his father die in front of him when he was 5. His mother reported that he hit her with a plastic hose from the vacuum cleaner. His mother died three months before the shooting, and he moved in with family friends.
Cruz was bullied by his brother and classmates, his brother told a detective. Ramos was bullied for having a stutter and a strong lisp, friends and family told the Washington Post.
Both struggled academically, with Cruz faltering at a credit recovery school after being expelled from Stoneman Douglas and Ramos failing to meet the requirements needed to graduate this year with other high school seniors.
Once the two picked their target, neither had trouble getting on campus.
The Texas killer walked onto campus unobstructed and through an unlocked back door, after crashing a pickup he was driving, according to an official with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The Parkland killer stepped off an Uber carrying a rifle bag and walked past a security monitor, even though that monitor later told a detective he recognized him as “Crazy Boy” and someone he had always thought might become a school shooter.
There was no law enforcement officer on campus at the time in Texas, while Stoneman Douglas had a school resource officer that failed to confront the killer.
One significant difference in the two killers is that Ramos chose an elementary school for reasons that are unclear, while Cruz targeted the high school where he had felt rejected.
“Most of these do not occur in an elementary. That’s a unique situation,” Gualtieri said.
However, the one school shooting that was deadlier than Uvalde took place in an elementary school, Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn. And a review of that killer’s background shows some of the same issues as the Texas and Florida killers, including isolation, dysfunctional home life and bullying, said Trump, the Cleveland school safety expert.
“There are similarities, but each one is unique, so you don’t want to revamp all your procedures based on the nuances of the last one,” Trump said. “The next one may be different. But there are common threads.”
———
