(Miami) US justice should compensate victims and families of victims of the Parkland shooting to the tune of $ 130 million, as federal police failed to investigate information that could have prevented the tragedy, reported monday the New York Times.
On Valentine’s Day in 2018, Nikolas Cruz opened fire at his former high school in Parkland, Florida with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, killing 17 people and injuring about 15 others, in what was once one of the worst school massacres in the United States.
Mr. Cruz, 19 at the time, was able to legally purchase an assault rifle despite his psychiatric history.
The US Federal Police (FBI) admitted after the shooting had not investigated two pieces of information they had received concerning him.
The owner of a YouTube channel had reported 5 months before the facts a comment left under one of his videos in which a user by the name of “nikolas cruz” had said that he would become “a professional school shooter”.
Then in January 2018, six weeks before the killing, a woman called the FBI number for providing information and detailed how Mr. Cruz showed on Instagram the weapons and ammunition he was accumulating.
“I know it will explode”, she had warned, saying her fear that the young man “slips into a school and starts shooting”, according to the New York Times.
The admission of this error by the FBI had devastated the families of victims, who had finally sued the federal police for negligence, recalls the American daily.
Nikolas Cruz, 23 today, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder last month and said he was “sorry”.
He must now be brought before a jury for his sentence to be fixed. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty.