MIAMI (AP) - The Latest on the Florida school shooting (all times local):
7:35 p.m.
Authorities are seeking to have the brother of a teen charged with killing 17 people at a Florida school involuntarily committed and prohibited from possessing guns.
A Broward Sheriff’s Office news release says the agency filed for a risk protection order against 18-year-old Zachary Cruz in circuit court Tuesday under a new “red flag law” that was just signed by the governor last week.
If a judge approves the request, Cruz would be hospitalized for a mental health evaluation and barred from acquiring firearms.
Cruz was arrested and charged with trespassing Monday afternoon at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He is currently being held on $500,000 bail. His brother, Nikolas Cruz, is charged with a Feb. 14 shooting rampage at the school that killed 17 people.
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7 p.m.
Florida’s governor is offering to station state troopers at the high school where 17 people were killed last month.
Gov. Rick Scott sent a letter Tuesday to Broward County Sherriff Scott Israel and Broward County Superintendent Robert Runcie requesting that immediate action be taken to require an armed law enforcement officer to secure every point of entry at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while students are on campus.
The letter says the state is willing to provide assistance from the Florida Highway Patrol until a more permanent safety plan can be put into place. Scott says he continues to hear from parents who lost their children in the Feb. 14 shooting, and they are still concerned about student safety at the school.
The younger brother of the teen charged in the shooting was arrested at the school on a trespassing charge Monday.
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6:45 p.m.
Authorities say a Florida deputy has been suspended for sleeping while on duty at a Florida school where 17 people were killed last month.
A Broward Sheriff’s Office news release says Deputy Moises Carotti was suspended with pay Tuesday pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.
The release says a student approached a sheriff’s office sergeant who was patrolling the interior of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shortly after 5 p.m. Monday and told the sergeant that Carotti was asleep in his patrol car. The sergeant reported finding the marked patrol vehicle and waking Carotti with a knock on the window.
Another deputy was sent to replace Carotti for that shift.
A telephone message left with the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association wasn’t immediately returned.
Earlier Monday afternoon, 18-year-old Zachary Cruz, the brother of the teen charged in the shooting, was arrested at the school on a trespassing charge.
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Authorities say a student at a Florida high school where 17 people were killed last month has been arrested for making threatening social media posts, while two others were arrested in separate, unrelated incidents for bringing knives to school.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office announced the arrests in a news release Tuesday.
Deputies say they received a tip Tuesday that a male student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had posted pictures of a gun and bullets on Snapchat with threatening messages. The 10th-grader was involuntarily hospitalized for mental health reasons.
Deputies say a female student dumped cereal on a male student’s head and pulled a 2-inch knife on him Tuesday morning after he made an obscene comment to her friend.
Deputies say they found a 9-inch knife in a male student’s backpack Tuesday after another student had reported he was brandishing the weapon on the bus a day earlier.
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5 p.m.
A Florida commission formed to study mass shootings and school safety will contain three parents of students who died during the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The members of the 16-member commission were announced Tuesday. It was created under a school safety law passed as a response to the shootings that killed 17 people last month in Parkland.
Ryan Petty, Andrew Pollack and Max Schachter will serve on the commission. They are the fathers of victims Alaina Petty, Meadow Pollack and Alex Schachter.
The commission will review what happened at Parkland and other mass shootings and make recommendations on how to prevent future attacks. The commission was appointed by Gov. Rick Scott, House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement commissioner will also serve on the board.
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4:45 p.m.
The Florida woman who watched over the teen suspected of killing 17 people at a Florida school says she did everything she could to warn law enforcement about him several months before the shooting.
Rocxanne Deschamps spoke publicly for the first time since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during a Tuesday news conference in New York.
Deschamps described being neighbors with the Cruz family in Parkland and how her son played with Nikolas Cruz and his brother.
Just before Lynda Cruz died suddenly last November, Deschamps promised to take care of the boys.
Knowing Nicholas Cruz had mental issues and obsessions with weapons, Deschamps says she implored him to get professional help and take medication but he refused. Her calls to police about suspect behavior resulted in no action. He eventually moved in with another family when Deschamps said she told him to choose between his guns and her home.
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1:40 p.m.
A judge has set bond at $500,000 for the younger brother of suspected school shooter Nikolas Cruz after he was arrested for trespassing at the Florida high school where 17 people were gunned down.
Eighteen-year-old Zachary Cruz had a bond hearing Tuesday. The state sought a $750,000 bond, noting that he had admitted visiting the campus two other times since the shooting. Prosecutors also said he had been observed during an earlier jail visit with his brother saying that Nikolas Cruz is famous.
Judge Kim Theresa Mollica ordered Zachary to stay away from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School if he’s released. She also said the home where he is living in Palm Beach County should be searched for weapons.
Deputies say he rode his skateboard onto the campus Monday afternoon, saying he was there to “reflect on the school schooling and to soak it in.”
He is being held in the same jail where his 19-year-old brother is.
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11:15 a.m.
Police have told the Miami Herald that a gun buy-back program has taken 128 guns off the streets, including two assault weapons turned in by a father who lives near the Florida school where 17 people were killed.
Attorney Steve Hemmert says in a Facebook post shared 87,000 times that he has “eliminated the hypocrisy of these guns” from his house and can now “feel comfortable” calling on the government to ban them.
Hemmert says his 14-year-old daughter helped him build one of the military-style assault rifles from scratch. After the Florida shooting, she told her father that she plans to wear only sneakers to school, in case she has to run.
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8:20 a.m.
The brother of the 19-year-old who confessed to gunning down 17 people at a Florida high school spent the night in jail after he was arrested for trespassing on the campus.
Broward Sheriff’s deputies arrested 18-year-old Zachary Cruz on Monday afternoon, saying he rode his skateboard onto the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus after being warned to stay away. They put him in the same Fort Lauderdale jail where his brother, Nikolas Cruz, has been housed since the Feb. 14 shooting.
Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie called Zachary Cruz’s actions odd.
Survivors of the shooting are getting ready for Saturday’s March for Our Lives in Washington. Some will join a panel discussion about guns Tuesday night at Harvard University.
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