Flashes of Rage. Family Loss. Nikolas Cruz’s Lifetime of Trouble

Parkland, (Us) Fla. 15 Feb. : Before he was hauled into a jailhouse hearing room on Thursday, head bowed and shackled at the wrists and ankles, Nikolas Cruz had been causing trouble as long as anyone here could remember.
Neighbors said patrol cars were regularly in his mother’s driveway. More recently, Mr. Cruz, 19, had been expelled from his high school. He posted pictures of weapons and dead animals on social media.
Almost immediately after Mr. Cruz turned up at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Wednesday and, the authorities said, killed 17 people with a semiautomatic rifle, the disconnected shards of a difficult life began to come together. Students and neighbors traded stories of their experiences with him and wondered if anything could have been done.
Some of the stories fell within the bands of typical teenage mischief-making. But others — including a comment on YouTube Mr. Cruz may have posted last year saying he wished to be “a professional school shooter” — were considerably more troubling. The comment, left under the name “nikolas cruz,” was reported to the F.B.I. by someone who did not know Mr. Cruz, and the agency said on Thursday that it had been unable to determine who had posted it.-NYTimes