Posted on 02/15/2018 8:13:56 AM PST by xzins
Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in Wednesday’s horrific massacre at a Florida high school, was allegedly reported to the FBI in September after he left a comment on a bail bondsman’s YouTube channel saying that he was going to be a “professional school shooter.”
The former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had previously been expelled for disciplinary problems prior to the mass shooting that left 17 people dead.
In a YouTube video published on the evening of the attack, Ben Bennight, a Mississippi bondsman, explained that he was contacted by the FBI at approximately 3 p.m. about a comment on one of his videos that he had reported last fall.
“The FBI just left my house in regards to this situation,” Bennight stated. “September 24th 2017, I sent a screenshot of a comment on one of my videos — now people keep asking me which video was it, but I don’t know, I don’t remember what video it was — when I saw the comment come through on my Studio app on my iPhone I screenshot the comment and hit the report button to report it to YouTube. Of course, they removed the comment.”
The video then scrolled through the screenshot and his report to YouTube.
Bennight proceeded to report the comment to the FBI.
“I looked up the number to my local field office and I called and left them a message. The next day I had two FBI agents standing in my office taking down the information and copies of the screenshot. They were asking me questions that of course I couldn’t answer. All it was on my channel was a comment, people leave pretty heinous comments on a pretty regular basis,” Bennight continued.
“This comment said ‘I am going to be a professional school shooter’ and I knew that I could not just ignore that,” he said. “I screenshotted the comment, I sent it to the appropriate authorities — and I imagine that from there they did a pretty thorough investigation and tried to find out who this person was,” he explained.
The bondsman continued on to explain that the YouTube comment did not come from an anonymous account, but from one with the name Nikolas Cruz.
“It wasn’t a generic screen name, the screen name was Nikolas Cruz — which I’m sure as you know by now, is the name of the guy that did the shooting in Florida today,” Bennight said.
Bennight explained that the first contact from the FBI today came in a phone call from his local field office shortly after the shooting. He stated that an agent called him, asked where he was and asserted that he was on his way to his house. Immediately after that, he says that he received a call from an agent from the Miami field office.
“I called him back and he’s like, ‘hey, you know, I’m just following up on a report that you made a couple months back’ — and I was like yeah, I just got off the phone with an agent over here,” Bennight said. “I emailed the Miami agent everything I had — well, everything I had was just that screenshot.”
Within an hour, the agent from his local office was at his home.
When the agent arrived at his home, he was questioned about if he had any previous contact with Cruz, which he says he did not. He was also questioned about how his report was handled at the time.
“I would like to think they were already investigating this guy and they had him at the top of their radar and that’s how they ended up contacting me so quickly,” Bennight said. “I wish I could have given them more information, but it was just a comment on my channel.”
The YouTube channel as well as all other social media belonging to Cruz appeared to have been taken offline by Wednesday evening.
A sane, logical response. Now hand me a torch and grab a pitchfork
Respect much for FBI professionalism?
The agency is a poster child for bureaucratic and personal dysfunction
Coup plotting elitists- they couldnt even get that right
Luckily
A mental commitment is not a jailing
THIS!!
How bizarre is it that his guardians, the family friends who took him in after his mother died, KNEW he had an AK-47? and allowed him to keep it in their house?! I am a member of the NRA and believe this is a classic case of laws are useless if parents and guardians abdicate responsibility.
It was the gun....that damn gun. (sarcasm)
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3632309/posts?page=74#74
We spend time on locating nutcases. I’m ok with that.
But that school could have been made Nikolas Cruz proof, if someone had spent the money to do so.
My kids, grandkids are my most precious “possessions” in this world. Security for the people is supposed to be the most important job of government.
Hardening the security at schools should be very doable.
I don’t think the guy on top isn’t Cruz. Too many structural differences.
BINGO!
I agree with what you wrote, but my agreement comes with a word of caution.
There are numerous locales and states in our country where me and you would be viewed as a “deplorable clinging to our guns and religion.” If “they” all agree that my comment and yours are not politically correct and in opposition to their values, what if they have the power to detain us for evaluation and possibly re-education?
While you and I see differences in our statements (a matter of heartfelt thoughts based on our historically acceptable values) with homicidal rantings of a madman, some of them do not.
Trust me - I wish our mental health system was more pro-active and I wish law enforcement had more tools today like I had when I first started long ago - drive them to the hospital and have them evaluated by a professional mental health counselor, but that is a difficult process even when a person is having an obvious mental episode in that moment. It is far more difficult based on social media posting and the rants of a teenager. While I think there are instances where an obsession with firearms might be an indicator in the presence of other factors, there are many on television and in congress right now who believe a big gun collection is evidence of mental illness absent any other factors.
I want to find the answers just as you do, but I also view it with a healthy sense of caution because we cannot prevent every evil in society and our natural reflex of empowering the government comes with unintended consequences.
I think we can all agree that our nation needs a more proactive mental health system, but we also likely agree that the answer in 99 out of 100 cases seems to be “put them on pills and hope for the best.” This comes with unintended consequences also for children and teenagers, but that is a topic for another day and I have to go to work.
FRegards
“A mental commitment is not a jailing”
Yes, I know.
That was why I talked about the difficulties in obtaining a mental commitment in my post.
I don’t know what the FBI did, but I imagine if an agent came in person to speak to the man who reported this that they probably sent a referral to the other office.
I've also been wondering where he was adopted from, and about his biological parents. I think I read that he has a brother who was also adopted by the same family.
But have seen very little about his birth circumstances.
“Wonder if this kid was adopted from abroad... he has the “ look”
I have a hunch but no gonna say the country
Rhymes with Prussia”
Said the same thing on a different thread early this AM.
Yup. To put it more broadly, 50 years ago...
There was higher church attendance.
There were fewer broken families.
There were no video games that glorified shooting and violence.
There was no music that glorified shooting and violence.
There was no "social media" where the deranged could become known world-wide in a matter of minutes.
And...more people were institutionalized for severe mental illness.
Society has devolved from decades of moral decay and these school shootings are one of the tragic results.
But....Sessions recused himself!!
Did anyone see the live Fox new conference out of Florida about an hour ago. The Bureau SAIC in Miami was at the conference and made the most pathetic statement you could imagine about the Bureau’s supposed inability to trace down the shooter’s postings on the Internet. The statement begins at 5:44.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5MtcAtpVfI
Just looking at his eyes tells me something is wrong with him!
Women who drink alcohol during pregnancy can give birth to babies with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, sometimes known as FASDs. FASD is the umbrella term for a range of disorders. These disorders can be mild or severe and can cause physical and mental birth defects.
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