FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ In the days leading up to February's massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, shooter Nikolas Cruz recorded chilling videos outlining his intentions and searched the internet to learn how long it takes police to respond to a school shooter and how difficult it is to commit a murder.
Details of Cruz's online behavior were shared Wednesday with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, which is meeting in Sunrise this week.
"Is killing easy?" was one of the search terms Cruz entered on his cellphone, according to Pinellas County Sheriff's Office Sgt. John Suess.
In one video, Cruz appears to have gutted an iguana.
"I ripped out its organs," he brags in the segment played for the commission. "And it's dead. Wooooooo!"
In a note on his cellphone dated Jan. 21, Cruz wrote to himself, "I want to kill people but I don't know how I can do it. Walk to a park, get someone to pick me up I just don't know anymore but it will happen soon."
Suess also played clips that have already been released by the Broward State Attorney's Office, including a video in which Cruz introduces himself as "the next school shooter" and promises to target at least 20 people, saying "all the kids in school will run in fear and hide."
There was no indication that the videos were sent to or viewed by anyone other than Cruz, Suess said.
Cruz is facing the death penalty if convicted of 17 counts of murder. He is also charged with 17 counts of attempted murder.
The public safety commission is charged with trying to determine what went wrong on Feb. 14, from the lapses that allowed Cruz to secure a weapon to the law enforcement response to the shooting and its aftermath.
"How long does it take a cop to show up at a school shooting," Cruz typed into one search engine.
He researched the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado and the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, also in Colorado.
And he accessed an Ohio law enforcement video that showed how law enforcement would respond to an active shooter.
Family members of several victims seemed angry as they listened to Suess' report.
"I already knew that he was a sick, sociopathic criminal," said Andrew Pollack, father of slain student Meadow Pollack. "What's troubling is that no one did anything about it."
