’Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies that Created the Prkland Sh**ter and Endanger America’s Students’ By Andrew Pollack & Max Eden
Information about NC:
- One female student was so afraid of him that she often wanted to stay home.
- One day a rumour spread like wildfire: Cr*z had killed his cat. This student worked up the nerve to ask him, “What happened to your cat?”. He replied, “I took it in the backyard. I have a lake. I put it in its cage and I drowned it.” "What do you mean?” “I killed my cat."
- NC showed them a series of pictures on his phone. His cat. His cat in the cage. The cage going into the water. The cage coming out of the water. The cat, wet and dead. This student was horrified. NC was transfixed, both by the pictures and by her horror.
- As seen in his educational record, he was diagnosed at age 3 with developmental delays and later with a speech impairment, a language-processing deficiency, and attention deficit disorder.
- After February of 2013, he was suspended for nearly half of the next calendar year.
- ”I never had him as a student. But everyone knew who he was because he wreaked havoc.“ -Teacher at Westglades
- In September 2013 he banged on a classroom door so violently that the glass shattered, striking students inside. This was characterized as vandalism but never formally recorded on his disciplinary record.
- On October 21st, his teacher (Carrie Yon) emailed assistant principle Atonio Lindsay, ”I wanted to let you know about Nick’s behavior today. He seems to be getting worse with each day. Following is what took place in the first 10 minutes of class“. She explained that when he wouldn’t stop screaming, she told him she’d have to ask him to leave if he kept up the disruption. When he stuck up his middle finger, she went over to the phone. Cr*z ran over, took the phone from her, tried to dial 911, banged the phone on the receiver when that didn’t work, and then ran out of the classroom.
- Several teachers, in exhasperation and perhaps fear, tried to refuse to let him into their classroom. But they were informed by the school administrators that this was not permitted.
- In November he was referred to the PROMISE program for vandalizing a bathroom faucet, but did not attend for reasons the school district refuses to explain. If a student skips PROMISE, district policy requires that he be referred to the juvenile justice system, but he was not for reasons the school district refuses to explain.
- On November 20th, 2013, he ran into the middle of a busy road during a fire drill. Students were terrified as he could have died if an oncoming car had not stopped in time. Teachers assured students, ”Don’t worry, he’s going to go somwhere he can get the help he needs now“. But this was merely optimism. Another teacher wrote a disciplinary referral categorizing his suicide attempt as ”Gross Insubordination“ and ”Aggresive and Dangerous Behavior.“ But school administrators rejected that categorization and categorized it instead as a minor act of disruptuption.”
“If Cr*z had been involuntarily committed for psychiatric observation under Florida’s Baker Act in response to his suicide attempt, it could have accelerated the process of sending him to Cross Creek. But he was not. It took until February 2014, five months after Westglades began the evaluation process and one year after his misbehavior became so severe that he was suspended essentially every other day, to send Cr*z to Cross Creek.”
- When teachers of Cr*z were asked what he was interested in or enjoyed, almost every single one of his teachers mentioned guns, the military, or war.
This excerpt speaks to the insanity of mainstreaming a student like Cr*z back into a traditional school like MSD. These things did not happen before Runcie became superintendant and brought more social justice ideology into the mix:
“According to Ms. Campbell, before Robert Runcie became superintendent, she had never seen a student mainstreamed from a school like Cross Creek in less than three years. The process typically took several semesters, with the student’s IEP team *gradually* adding class periods at the traditional school and carefully monitoring any changes in the student’s behavior. Cr*z spent his first semester at MSD taking two classes, largely unsupervised, and then began attending MSD full time the following semester. Ms. Campbell said that she had never heard of anything like it. This all bears reiterating to emphasize the insanity of it: Cross Creek staff were well aware of Cr*z’s profoundly disturbing behavior at Westglades. They knew about his obsession with guns and dreams about killing people. They were so frightened that they took the extremely rare step of contacting his private psychiatrist. Yet not only did they return him to a traditional high school at an unprecedented speed, they also enrolled him in JROTC, a course in which he would learn to shoot using an air gun that resembled an AR-15.”
- On December 14th, 2015, Cr*z’s IEP team decided to allow him to attend MSD full time. He had made progress in the intensive therapuetic setting of Cross Creek, where well trained professionals could watch him like a hawk. But when he transitioned to MSD, his old “beheavior management” plan was discontinued and no new plan was created. Teachers were left uninformed about who the student was, what to watch for, and how to support him.
Looking back on the transition, a staff member lamented, “They just threw him to the wolves.”
- Cr*z bragged about getting a gun to sh**t up the school in Feburary 2016. The officer who recieved this alert told the concerned woman that Cr*z’s instagram post was “Protected by the first amendment right of free speech”. The woman asked if there was *any way* to prevent Cr*z from getting a gun when he turned 18, and the officer said that Cr*z’s right to purchase a firearm was protected by the 2nd amendment and *nothing* could be done.This officer was WRONG. Threatening to shoot up a school is a felony that could have prohibited him from buying a gun. (And even IF he wasn’t convicted, an arrest could have gone a long way toward LE taking future reports about NC seriously.) This officer didn’t even write a police report about the call.
- NC often came to school dressed in full camoflauge gear, mask included, and jumped from behind poles to scare other students.
- He would bring dead animals in his lunch box and give it to another student, telling her there was a treat inside.
- Dana Craig submitted statements about Cr*z’s threats to her and her friends but administrators did nothing. One day she was sitting in class when NC came in and walked straight toward her, and stood over her, staring and breathing loudly, as a hush fell across the classroom. After what seemed to be like a long time, security monitor Anna Ramos entered and said, “Someone here isn’t where he’s supposed to be” and took him out of the classroom. Records don’t show him being taken to the office for this.
- When MSD math teacher Suzanne Giorgione found out she was teaching Cr*z, she went to school administrators and told them she refused to set foot in the same classroom as a student who had previously threatened to kill her. As a result, Admin rearranged his schedule.
- Several students reported having friends whose parents had complained about having Cruz in their child’s classroom, and the school responded by changing *their* schedules.
- At the beginning of the school year (a month before his fight with Enea), he approached Enea to shake his hand and call a “truce”, telling him that “he could have her”.
- However, on September 20, 2016 Cr*z threw a water bottle at Enea and then jumped on top of him, punching him. Enea stood up to try to throw Cruz to the ground but NC held on tenaciously, *attempting to bite Enea’s face*, only to catch Enea’s hair in his teeth and hold on that way. The infamous fight video only catches the end of it when students jump in to break it up.
- After the fight, administrators searched his backpack and found bullet casings. He explained he used his backpack to go hunting. According to MSD documentation, when asked why he liked to hunt, he replied that he liked to get food, then asked, “Isn’t that what normal people would say?”
- Before he attacked Enea, he told students at his table what he was about to do and they recorded it from the beginning. Students who took these videos were called down to the office and told to delete them. These videos would have provided clear evidence of a hate crime (NC repeatedly threatened him, called him a n*gger and other racial slurs, and had now attacked him). But MSD wanted to be seen as a school without crime and chaos, so they demanded evidence of fights be deleted.
- Enea received an out-of-school suspension, while NC only received a two day ISS.
At this point, NC’s safety plan included banning him from having a backpack at school: “The obvious rationale: if he has a backpack, he could bring a deadly weapon to school and kill people. They decided that Nikolas Cruz was too dangerous to be allowed on campus with a backpack but he should *not* be arrested. This may seem astonishing, but it is actually entirely faithful to philosophy of the Broward school district, as expressed by Superintendent Runcie: “We are not going to continue to arrest our kids” and give them a criminal record.
- He brought binocluars to school and stared at people through them.
- One student had nightmares about NC, ”shooting me or stabbing me…every single night. I couldn’t go to school because I was afraid.“ These concerns along with many others were brought before administrators but nothing was done.
- When he decided to revoke his ESE protections, he appeared incapable of providing written notice ”perhaps due to his language-processing impairment".
- When being confronted about destroying other students model bridges, NC stated, “I am not mentally stable! I am fucking crazy, yo! I love to see people in pain and I have two shotguns at my house.” (As previously reported)
- He’d often walk around the courtyard at lunch making “bang” motions with his fingers as though he were shooting at birds.
He called Cross Creek after his mother Lynda died and told them, “Before my mom died, I promised her I would graduate high school. I get that Cross Creek is the only place where I can do that. How do I get back in?”. They didn’t help him get back in.
Lynda’s responses to Westglades social worker:
What is the child’s problem behavior? He can’t control his temper, especially when faced with frustration. He has frequent anger outburts.
How would you describe these behaviors? He starts screaming, kicking, throwing things, and punching holes in the walls.
What are the most problematic for you? “Destruction” when he throws a tantrum, things get broken, nothing is safe. I have polka dotted walls from all the Spackle I have to use to fill the holes in the walls.
How often do these behaviors occur? Every day, especially while playing Xbox.
Are there situations in which the behaviors never or rarely occur? No, if he is losing at Xbox there are no two ways about it.
What do you think needs to be done to help this child? He needs to be properly diagnosed before he can be treated. I know ADD is not the cause of all his problems. We need to know what is wrong with him.
Victims:
Anthony Borges survived after being shot 5 times by taking his shirt off, ripping it into two pieces, and using the pieces as tourniquets for his legs. Anthony had been a boy scout in Venezuela and had taken his survival training very seriously.
Aaron Feis was found deceased with burns on his hands, indicating that he managed to get a grip on the shooter’s AR-15 before being fatally shot.
Cara Loughran had been shot prior to Meadow shielding her. This is why she did not flee with the other students. “Meadow had been right next to Joaquin in front of the woman’s bathroom. She tried to cross the hallway, but was shot four times. She crawled to a classroom, but the door was locked (as it was supposed to be). Next to her was freshman Cara Loughran, who had also been shot. Meadow draped her body over Cara’s to protect her. Five more shots went through both of their bodies.”
During the shooting one of the MSD staff members stated over the radio, “It sounds like fireworks.”. Aaron Feis replied, “That’s not fucking fireworks”.
Aaron Feis’s brother Ray recalled that Feis “wasn’t scared of anyone, but he would talk about that ‘crazy motherfucker who threatens everyone’ and shouldn’t be at this school”.
A survivor recalled, “But then you also heard, like, moaning from the shots. I don’t know if it was, like, the shooter making that noise or if it was someone who got shot. And, but, then, that’s also, you also heard…heard, like, laughing. And we all look at each other in the classroom we’re just like, "Oh my God, is someone seriously laughing?” (Previously seen in witness statements)
Notable Quotes:
Royer Borges (Anthony’s father) on activists blaming the NRA: “This makes no sense. You’re telling me that all these groups will pour money in to a national political battle against a powerful organization over things that had no connection to what happened? And then what? Maybe the gun control people will win some changes, but what about what actually happened? What about the people responsible in Broward? What about justice?”
In the middle of his 5th grade year, Cruz’s teachers had to make a choice that would define the future of his education…
“In an earlier era, a student like Cruz could continue to receive specialized attention in a self-contained classroom for students with similar disabilities for at least part of each day in Middle School. However, between the pressure on schools to assess students using standardized tests under the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the pressure on schools to put students in the “least restrictive environment” possible under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, spending part of the day in a specialized classroom was no longer an option for a student like Cruz in a Broward middle school. It was either full “inclusion” at Westglades Middle School or full “exclusion” at a specialized school for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities: Cross Creek.“
”…social justice activist groups frame this issue as a black and white question of “civil rights”. Putting students like Cruz in schools like Cross Creek is alleged to be “ableist” (discrimination against the disabled) and keeping them in schools like Westglades is the self-evidently virtuous practice of “inclusion”.
When Westglades staff heard that Cruz had committed the massacre at MSD, some couldn’t believe it. The fact that he became a mass murderer wasn’t what surprised them. They were surprised that he attacked MSD. “How is that possible?” one Westglades educator recalled thinking….
“We did our jobs. It took forever, but we got him where he needed to go. We couldn’t believe they ever let him into MSD.”
“Cross Creek is one of 3 specialized schools in Broward for students with extreme behavioral disabilities. It serves about 150 students in grades k-12, most of whom have been diagnosed with mental illnesses and take psychotropic medications. It has a two-to-one student-to-adult ratio, including eleven counselors, fifteen behavior technicians, and three therapists. There was NO question this was where Nikolas Cruz needed to be. The question must be answered. How was he sent back to a normal school?”
“Officers from other departments told us that, if they received this many calls about the same juvenile, they would watch him like a hawk and not be shy about making an arrest. But if Sheriff Israel judged his success by how well he kept juveniles out of jail, then up until February 14th, 2018, Nikolas Cruz was perhaps the most striking success.”
“Martinez respected the March For Our Lives gun control students, but he had mixed feelings about the course of public debate after the shooting. Reflecting on how Sheriff Israel and Superintendent Runcie blamed the NRA, Martinez lamented, “What the students don’t know is that the people who are telling them to go out and protest are the ones that are endangering them.… They’re the ones who failed. These failed policies failed students miserably. Then they deflect the whole event and try to build their political careers on top of it. The students are being misled.”
“I’ve been over every inch of what happened. The NRA had nothing to do with it…
This happened in a Democrat county with a Democrat sheriff, a Democrat superintendent, and a Democrat school board, implementing Democrat ideas on criminal justice, Democrat ideas on special education, and Democrat ideas on school discipline. And after Democrat voters gave all these Democrats a resounding vote of confidence in the school board election, the Democrat teachers union president, Anna Fusco, wrote in a Facebook group about our campaign for accountability: “Now you can all shut up!”….Meanwhile, at the national level, Democrat organizers swooped in and weaponized my daughter’s murder for their Democrat agenda and to fund-raise to elect more Democrats.”
"It is astonishing that 18-1958 only took seventeen lives that day. The death toll could easily have been 170. He had ten minutes alone with eight hundred children. The only one who stopped him was himself.”
