Parkland school gunman was searched every morning at Stoneman Douglas
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ The former student who later shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was such a threat in school that he was searched every morning for weapons, new testimony shows.
The extraordinary measure followed an earlier decision to bar Nikolas Cruz from taking a backpack to campus after he talked of suicide and wrote "kill" in a notebook.
The search procedure was revealed in a sworn deposition from Kelvin Greenleaf, the security guard who searched Cruz. The South Florida Sun Sentinel obtained a copy of the deposition this week.
"Never found a weapon on him," Greenleaf explained in the testimony July 11. "I think we got concerned when, I think, we found out he drank bleach, tried to hurt himself or something like that, the kid. That's when we started, like, having the kid come in every morning to be searched by me, but never found a weapon on the kid, never."
Administrators forced Cruz to withdraw from Stoneman Douglas within six months _ in February 2017.
He walked onto the Parkland campus a year later and fatally shot 14 students and three educators with an assault-style rifle. He's facing the death penalty.
The district did not respond Thursday to a request for comment about Greenleaf's statements.
_South Florida Sun Sentinel
