The FBI Was Warned About The Florida School Shooter Back In September

This is really devastating.

It turns out the FBI was told Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old who shot up a Florida High School yesterday, last fall.

Could the FBI have stopped this? Would 17 people’s children still be alive today if they would have done more?

According to Buzzfeed News:

Last fall, a Mississippi bail bondsman and frequent YouTube vlogger noticed an alarming comment left on one of his videos. “I’m going to be a professional school shooter,” said a user named Nikolas Cruz.

The YouTuber, 36-year-old Ben Bennight, alerted the FBI, emailing a screenshot of the comment to the bureau’s tips account. He also flagged the comment to YouTube, which removed it from the video.

He sent them this:

The FBI did not ignore the tip. In fact, they followed up immediately.

Agents with the bureau’s Mississippi field office got back to him “immediately,” Bennight said, and conducted an in-person interview the following day, on Sept. 25.

“They came to my office the next morning and asked me if I knew anything about the person,” Bennight told BuzzFeed News. “I didn’t. They took a copy of the screenshot and that was the last I heard from them.”

So… was that it?

Cruz lived with his parents. Did they contact them? Did they contact the school?

Surely they could have alerted those around him about these comments and put him on some kind of watch. Maybe refer him to a counselor.

I’m not an “expert” here… but surely SOMETHING could have been done… I refuse to believe this was inevitable. This guy was literally telling people he planned on doing this.

In the wake of the deadly shooting, questions have emerged over whether officials and acquaintances had missed warning signs about the alleged shooter, a former student who was expelled from the high school last year for disciplinary reasons.

Classmates, relatives, and neighbors have described Cruz as a troubled “loner” who often talked about guns and flaunted his obsession with weapons on his social media accounts. And Jim Gard, a math teacher at the school, told the Miami Herald that the teen had previously been identified as a potential threat to other students.

The FBI should have tracked this guy down (Which is not hard to do.) and contacted the school. People at that school ALREADY thought he was a threat.

That would have been more than enough reason to alert his family and begin some kind of mental health program.

We need to start taking warning signs MUCH more seriously.

Though his name matches the YouTube user flagged in September, FBI officials would not say whether they have confirmed that the account belonged to Cruz.

However, the FBI called Ben Bennight, the guy who sent that original tip, shortly after Cruz was taken in to custody.

So yeah… it’s him.

But around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday — about 30 minutes after Cruz was taken into custody by police in Broward County — Special Agent Ryan Furr with the FBI’s Miami field office called Bennight and left him a voicemail.

“I think we spoke with you in the past about a complaint that you made about someone making a comment on your YouTube channel,” the agent said in the message, which Bennight provided to BuzzFeed News. “I just wanted to follow up with you on that and ask you a question with something that’s come up, if you wouldn’t mind giving me a ring.”

A few hours later, Bennight said, FBI agents in Mississippi visited him again in person, pressing for more information about the YouTube user Nikolas Cruz.

“They asked me if I knew who he was. I didn’t. I don’t,” Bennight said. “Then they left.”

This hurts my heart.

This could have been stopped… but it wasn’t.

If this isn’t a wake up call… I don’t know what is.