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.
Right on brother
I’m sorry but it seems to me that when it comes to offing Americans the FBI is consistently out to lunch. Always behind never ahead.
We are truly on our own.
Meanwhile in the ME our guys are fighting hard. Here with 17 casualties nobody in sight.
Mandatory gov ed should be over now as the kids are just sitting ducks
they would do better self educating and getting in the workforce, at least they are still alive.
They are parasitic malignancies in every society.
This is a great argument for owning guns. (Not that we needed one.)
Yes, that was Willowbrook on Staten island back in 1972. Rivera was nominated for a Pulitzer. Their were abuses there but instead of correcting the problems thanks in large part to the ACLU they were all pretty much shut down.
I just hope he was NOT a DACA baby, as some rumors have said.
This boy had a history of aggressive behavior. Enough to expell him. Enough to where his classmates expected this. His mother passed away and he was depressed. Another family brings him into his home. He brought his rifle and was asked to keep it locked and let him keep the keys.
My concern is (and this is hindsight as it usually is), should he have been left with the keys considering he was in an emotionally unstable state and had reports of aggressive behavior. I'm not blaming them. They stepped in and opened their home when he needed someone the most. But, in terms of the rifle and keys, What would you have done in a similar situation?
180 days X 24 hours = 4,340 hours
4,340 hours X 60 seconds = 259,200 seconds
259,200 / 50,000 emails = one email every 5.184 seconds.
And that’s based on a 24-hour day, with no time off for sleep.
How is that possible?
They were reported to the FBI.
God only knows what the FBI did with that information. “Encourage him on” is as likely a course of action as any, given the individuals in decision-making capacities in that agency.
The FBI was alerted about the Muslims who only wanted to fly A/V’s on Horizontal path no land and no take offs.. what did they do zip.
The are corrupt and part of the deep state.
Heard on Rush the FBI saying they couldn’t find out the identity of the person who said they wanted to become a school shooter... Is that not ridiculous?!
The issue for me is making the schools inpenetrable to shooters. Technology, scanning, concrete barriers, bulletproof glass, beefed up and armed security details doing rounds. All of these would have made it irrelevant where the gun was kept and who had the keys.
I wrote “email” when I meant “text.” Sorry.
He included his name on the post that the vlogger screen captured.
They KNEW his name was Nikolas Cruz.
How many of those could be in the entire USA?
They were also working WITH the bombers in the 1993 WTC attack, to the point of complaining that they didn’t put the bomb in the most effective spot.
Now that the limitless malfeasance in the FBI, and likely other intel agencies also, been revealed beyond a reasonable doubt, a full audit of their involvement in previous high-profile terror attacks is in order.
The murdered witness in the Boston Marathon case will be particularly interesting to hear explained. I definitely want to hear all about how they were able to get away with that one.
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