Is the Florida High School Shooter a 'Dreamer'?

RATING

ORIGIN

On 14 February 2018, 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, an affluent community north of Miami.

Authorities named Nikolas Cruz — a 19-year-old former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — as the suspect in custody for the crime. Almost immediately after his name was made public, social media users, apparently inspired by nothing more than a Spanish-sounding surname, began spreading an unfounded claim that he is an undocumented DACA recipient.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program gives people who were brought into the United States as young children temporary authorization to remain legally. Here are examples of such unverified claims:

Of course no post-tragedy conspiracy theory would be complete without a healthy dose of xenophobia and paranoia:

As has become the morbid pattern after mass shootings in the United States, people looked for clues that the shooter was motivated by an ideology counter to their own or expedient to their own political agendas. At the time of the shooting, lawmakers had been debating about immigration as a whole and the DACA program in particular, going so far as to shut down the government over the issue.

However no information has been provided by investigators or witnesses to support the claim that Cruz is an undocumented immigrant or a DACA recipient. During a press conference on the day of the shooting, Broward County Sheriff’s officials specified only that Cruz was born in September 1998 and had been expelled from the school due to disciplinary issues.

A student told a local news station that Cruz’s behavior was so troubling they believed he was “going to be the one to shoot up the school.” Police arrested him without incident off school grounds. Although the majority of victims were found inside the building, one was killed on the street near the school. and two just outside.

The unfounded claim that Cruz is a DACA recipient was hardly the only piece of false information circulating on social media in the immediate aftermath of the incident. A now-restricted Twitter account falsely purporting to belong to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly spread a false image of a person who is not the suspect (the image’s presence on message boards like 4chan predates the shooting):

The same account (along with others) perpetuated a long-standing hoax, once again blaming “Sam Hyde” for the shooting:

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Snopes Delivered to Your Inbox:

Quinn, Melissa.   “17 People Killed in Shooting at South Florida High School.”

     Washington Examiner.   14 February 2018.

Ogle, Connie, et al.   “Florida School Shooting Suspect Was Ex-Student Who May Have Been Flagged as Threat.”

     Miami Herald.   14 February 2018.

WMBB.   “What We Know About Florida School Shooting Suspect Nikolaus Cruz.”

     14 February 2018.

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