After a deadly shooting at a Florida high school, law enforcement officials said Thursday that early warning signs of violent behavior need to be reported early to prevent similar tragedies, and pressed the need for more police officers in communities nationwide.
“What I’m asking lawmakers to do — and go back to place like Tallahassee, places like Washington, D.C. — and get police the power [that] if they see something on social media…we need to have the power to take that person and bring them before mental health professionals at that particular time, involuntarily, and have them examined,” Scott Israel, sheriff of Broward County, said at a press conference.
The shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday afternoon around the time students were getting ready to leave for the day. Seventeen people have been confirmed dead in that shooting so far, with another 15 still in the hospital. The shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. He reportedly used a semi-automatic weapon and smoke grenades to commit these crimes.
Mr. Israel said local law enforcement was working with the FBI to talk to every witness and would offer a complete timeline later in the day. He could not release details on the exact weapon used, but said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was investigating and believed they knew where the weapon was purchased.
Gov. Rick Scott said that he was going to launch an effort to address mental health issues, especially among students and young people, to prevent violence like this from happening again.
“We’re going to have a real conversation about two things: How do we make sure when a parent is ready to send their children to school, that in Florida, that parent knows that child is going to be safe. Number two, how do we make sure these individuals with mental illness do not touch a gun,” Mr. Scott, Florida Republican, said.
The FBI acknowledged they did receive a threat about a possible school shooting, but said the investigation went nowhere.
“In 2017, the FBI received information about a comment made on a YouTube channel. The comment simply said ’I’m going to be a professional school shooter.’ No other information was included with that comment, which would indicate a time, location or a true identification of a person who made that comment,” Rob Lasky, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office.
“The FBI conducted database reviews and checks, but was unable to further identify the person who made the comment,” he said.
The state’s Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she sat with victims’ families at the Mariott, and said the victims include one as young as 14-years-old. She said the crime scene was carefully preserved, giving the state’s prosecutors plenty of evidence to pursue the case.
“That crime scene, from a prosecution point of view, was meticulously detailed, processed and it took as long as it needed to take to make sure it was thoroughly processed and acurately processed,” she said.
A GoFundMe crowdfunding page was set up for victims families. Ms. Bondi said her office secured a page to prevent fraudulent scams from trying to profit off the tragedy, and added that someone at the website knew a victim at the high school.
• Sally Persons can be reached at spersons@washingtontimes.com.
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