FBI Reportedly Received a Tip Saying FL Shooting Suspect Was ‘Going to Explode’
A woman who called an FBI tip line in early January described a young man — the eventual Florida shooter — with an arsenal of knives and guns who was "going to explode" and said she feared him "getting into a school and just shooting the place up." https://t.co/L82llMCoNq pic.twitter.com/PhmrdeIlhg
— CNN (@CNN) February 23, 2018
There is new reporting today on a tip the FBI received last month from someone who knew the Florida school shooter.
According to The New York Times––first reported by The Wall Street Journal––a woman called the FBI tip hotline and said, “I know he’s going to explode.”
Over the course of the call, which lasted more than 13 minutes, the tipster warned the F.B.I. that Mr. Cruz had been adrift since his mother’s death in November. The tipster provided four Instagram accounts for Mr. Cruz, which she said showed photos of sliced up animals and the firearms he had amassed. The caller, whose name was redacted on the transcript, said Mr. Cruz had used money from a life insurance policy after his mother’s death to purchase the weapons.
“If you go onto his Instagram pages, you’ll see all the guns,” the woman said.
Before calling the F.B.I., the woman telephoned law enforcement officials in Parkland, worried that Mr. Cruz might kill himself. But she didn’t hear back from them and became increasingly alarmed after she said Mr. Cruz posted online that “he wants to kill people.”
The Times has the full transcript available here.
The tipster says the gunman’s name, spells it out, and even said he brought a bird inside his house and “started cutting it up.”
[image via screengrab]
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