FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz slid into a booth at McDonald's right after the attack, coming face to face with a student whose sister he had just shot.
In a pushy manner, Cruz asked to hitch a ride with Maddy Wilford's brother, John, who was waiting for his mother to pick him up after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High on Feb. 14.
It was sheer coincidence that Cruz came upon Wilford's brother, Pinellas County Sheriff's Sgt. John Suess said Thursday in a presentation to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission. "It's my belief this is pure happenstance that he sits at a table with the brother of one of his victims," Suess said.
Maddy Wilford was among the 17 who were shot and survived on Feb. 14, while 17 others died.
Wilford, then a 17-year-old junior, was in a psychology class in Room 1213 when she was shot multiple times, including her chest. Other students in her class also were shot, including Carmen Schentrup, who died.
After the shooting, many students walked from the school to a nearby Walmart and McDonald's, just a few blocks west of the campus. Many phoned their parents for rides home. Cruz first went to Walmart, then McDonald's, all while police still were on the hunt for him at Stoneman Douglas.
He came upon John Wilford at McDonald's and "apparently was pretty pushy," Suess said. He asked Wilford for a ride because he knew Wilford's mother was coming to pick him up, he said.
When Suess was asked Thursday of the extent of the conversation between the two at McDonald's, Suess replied, "Very little."
Wilford left the restaurant, and Cruz left behind him, his request for a ride apparently rebuffed.
Cruz walked off alone toward a Coral Springs neighborhood about two miles from Stoneman Douglas.
There, an officer spotted and arrested him.
Two weeks after the shooting, the doctors who treated Maddy Wilford deemed her recovery remarkable. She's reportedly weighing a career in medicine, interning this summer at Broward Health North, the hospital where she was treated.
Wilford's father, reached by phone Thursday, declined to comment.
