MIAMI _ One month after Nikolas Cruz walked into a Parkland high school and murdered 17 people with an AR-15-style rifle, police are using a new Florida law passed in the wake of the attack to try and strip the shooter's younger brother from owning a gun.
The Broward Sheriff's Office announced Tuesday evening that deputies have petitioned the courts for a risk protection order to keep Zachary Cruz, 18, from possessing a firearm. Deputies are doing so under a new "Red Flag" law passed into law this month in order to prevent shootings like the one Nikolas Cruz unleashed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.
"If the RPO is granted, it will prohibit Cruz from possessing and acquiring firearms for a period of time to be determined by the court," the sheriff's office said in a press release.
The law allows law enforcement officials to seek permission from a judge to remove guns from someone's home or to block them from buying a gun until they can prove to a court that they're mentally fit. A BSO spokeswoman confirmed that the Baker Act is being used in the Zachary Cruz case.
Cruz's involuntary custody came one day after he was arrested for trespassing, when police found him skateboarding at the school his brother had attacked just one month earlier. Before his arrest, the younger Cruz told a deputy that he had visited the school because he wanted to "soak in" what his brother had done, according to his arrest affidavit.
A Broward County judge set a $500,000 bond Tuesday for Cruz. The standard bond for trespassing on school grounds is $25 and Cruz had paid it, his bond attorney said.
"He's being held because of who he's related to, not because of what he did," Cruz's bond attorney argued before Judge Kim Theresa Mollica.
Mollica, who also handled Nikolas Cruz's bond hearing, said that Zachary Cruz's Lake Worth home was to be searched for guns, and that he was to have no contact with his brother or any Stoneman Douglas students or staff.
Should Zachary Cruz post bond, Mollica said, he has to wear an ankle monitor, stay one mile from Stoneman Douglas High School and 500 feet from any school or child care facility.
