SUNRISE, Fla. _ Nikolas Cruz's late mother was an "enabler" who overrode the objections of school counselors when the future Parkland shooter wanted to buy a gun, according to the chairman of the state commission investigating the massacre.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who leads the commission reviewing the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said several counselors tried to help Cruz with his behavioral and disciplinary problems.
"This is not a situation where there wasn't yeoman's work being done by a whole bunch of people to try and get this guy off the path that he was on," he said. "But it just wasn't being effective."
One reason, he said, was Cruz's mother, Lynda Cruz, who died last November.
"His mother was an enabler, and his mother contributed to this significantly," Gualtieri said at a meeting of the commission, held at the BB&T Center in Sunrise. "To the point where at one time when they said that he wanted to buy a gun and the counselors from the school said he shouldn't have a gun, his mother said 'I don't care. If he wants a gun, he can have a gun.'"
