Samantha Allen, Kelly Weill, Taylor Lorenz
02.15.18 12:40 PM ET
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
PARKLAND, Florida—Nikolas Cruz, the man accused of killing 17 people in a Florida high school, was a member of a “white separatist paramilitary proto-fascist organization,” the group told The Daily Beast.
Cruz, 19, is accused of opening fire inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Prior to the shooting, he trained with the Republic of Florida, the group’s captain Jordan Jereb said (as first reported by the Anti-Defamation League). The RoF seeks to create a “white ethnostate” in Florida, according to its website, a view that Cruz supposedly shared.
Local law enforcement told the Tallahassee Democrat it has not corroborated Jereb’s claim. After previous mass shootings, the alt-right has spread disinformation online about alleged perpetrators.
“I know he knew full well he was joining a white separatist paramilitary proto-fascist organization,” Jereb said.
Last year, an alleged school shooter in New Mexico also expressed alt-right ideology online, as The Daily Beast previously reported.
Cruz “seemed like just a normal, disenfranchised, young white man,” Jereb said.
While no motive has been described by police, Jereb speculated that Cruz may have allegedly committed the massacre out of hatred for Jews or women.
“There’s a very real sense of feminism being a cancer. That could’ve played into what he did, but we have female members of RoF,” Jereb said, adding that “we’re not a big fan of Jews. I think there were a lot of Jews at the school that might have been messing with him.”
Jereb said Cruz belonged to a RoF “cell” from Clearwater and drove up with members to Tallahassee to do paramilitary training. RoF was recently operating in Tallahassee and attempting to court new members, according to a local news report from last year. The group posts videos of training montages on the internet with members in fatigues brandishing weapons.
“I’m not trying to glorify it, but he was pretty efficient in what he did,” Jereb said. “He probably used that training to do what he did yesterday. Nobody I know told him to do that, he just freaked out.”
YouTube
Cruz received at least one of his guns through the white supremacist group, according to Jereb.
“I think somebody bought him a Mosin–Nagant, but that’s bolt action. He had a semi-automatic in the school,” Jereb said.
Cruz bought the AR-15 rifle authorities say he used at the school in February 2017, the ATF said in an affidavit filed Thursday.
Hate in High School
Six classmates of Cruz told The Daily Beast he expressed extreme political views and disturbing behavior when he attended the high school he is now accused of attacking with a high-powered rifle.
“The one person I would expect to do it did it,” said Julianna Sivon, who said she sat next to Cruz in English class last year. “He loved talking about his guns. He just didn’t seem right but he didn’t seem like he would do something this big.”
Kamrie Bazal, 19, and Damar Osouna, 19, said they knew Cruz in school and that he talked about about guns but they did not suspect he would kill.
Nyla Hussain, a 16-year-old junior said her good friend sat next to Cruz in biology class last year and that he would regularly show her photos of dead animals.
“Whoever he sat next to in class he would show pics of animals that he hunted,” she said.
Two classmates said they saw Cruz wore a “Make America Great Again” hat.
“I saw him wear a Trump hat,” said Sebastian Gonzalez, a 19-year-old who graduated in 2017.
Ocean Parodie, a 17-year-old junior, said Cruz was politically extreme.
“For example, he would degrade Islamic people as terrorists and bombers. I've seen him wear a Trump hat,” Parodie said.
A Violent Life Online
Cruz wore the Trump hat in a photo on an Instagram account the company said belonged to him. Over his face he wore a red, white, and blue bandana. On that account and another one, Cruz posted photos of guns, knives, anti-Muslim slurs, and a picture of a toad he killed.
On YouTube, a person by the same name spewed hateful commentary about anti-fascists.
Cruz also celebrated Elliot Rodger, the gunman who killed seven people at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014, and who is considered a hero of the fringe men's rights movement.
“Elliot rodger will not be forgotten,” he commented on one video one year ago. Cruz also commented on a CNN video called, “Is our culture to blame for Elliot Rodger’s rants?”
The FBI said on Thursday it received a warning from a YouTube user about a “nikolas cruz” who wrote, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” in a comment. FBI field agents interviewed the tipsters, but the bureau’s special agent in charge in Parkland said the FBI was unable to identify the user.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 100 people have been killed or injured by perpetrators influenced by the alt-right since 2014.
—Gideon Resnick contributed to this report
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