He didn’t want to be there but attended through January in his 10th-grade year. Records show he left during eighth grade for Cross Creek School in Pompano Beach, which offers a program for emotionally and behaviorally disabled children. It didn’t work out for Cruz to remain at Westglades Middle School in Coral Springs. A year later, she told deputies Nikolas, then 15, had punched the wall after she took away his Xbox.Ĭruz never graduated high school, though he was still trying at age 19.įoul language, insults, disobedience, disruption - Cruz’s behavior was exactly what schoolteachers frowned upon. A few months later, she told deputies he had thrown her against the wall because she took away his Xbox gaming system. When he was 14, his mother reported that he had hit her with the plastic hose from a vacuum cleaner. The agency responded to 23 calls over 10 years, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said. His mother called the police to say he got physical with his brother and with her. The deputy wrote that “Zachary wishes that he had been ‘nicer’ to his brother” and that there may be resentment between the two “as Nikolas may have been the favored brother.” His brother told Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies last week that “he and his friends, when they were younger, had bullied Nikolas, which he now regrets ever doing,” the agency’s report says. When Zachary wanted to play with friends, their mother would make him take Nikolas along, the former neighbor and friend said.Īt 5-foot-7 and 120 pounds, the slight Nikolas Cruz was bullied, records indicate. “She was his best friend.”īut Nikolas had trouble making friends among peers, school records say. He was “a momma’s boy,” said the family friend. Nikolas’s mother doted on him, friends told the Sun Sentinel, and he was still learning to do household chores and laundry in his late teen years. He had counselors in school and at home, according to DCF records, and he took medications. His mom told sheriff’s deputies he also had obsessive-compulsive disorder and anger issues. He had been diagnosed with a string of disorders and conditions: depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, emotional behavioral disability and autism, records from the state Department of Children and Families show. Lynda Cruz sued two heart doctors and won a small settlement for her sons a few years later, court records show. Lynda Cruz holding her adopted son, Nikolas Cruz, died of pneumonia in November 2017. Roger Cruz was dead of a heart attack at age 67. She said, ‘What’s the matter, did Daddy punish you?’ Just as clear as day, he said, ‘Nope. “Nikolas came down the hallway and he went to his room, and he was crying. His mom was in the kitchen, the friend said. When Nikolas was 5, he was in the den with his father. The boys were raised Catholic and had their communions and confirmations, the family friend said.īut their life story soon took an unexpected turn. A fence slat on Liberty Park’s perimeter is still emblazoned with the name “Nikolas J. She drove a minivan, and she was an involved mother, ferrying the boys to Zachary’s sports games and involving them in the building of Parkland’s Liberty Park, the friend said. “They built another wing to the house, and the kids just had plenty to do.”Ī golfer and “suit-and-tie man,” the elder Cruz didn’t own guns, Aaronson said. I remember Roger having this entire, like, really extended type jungle gym out back, in the backyard, being built,” he said. But “when he was home,” Aaronson said, “he was all about his kids. Roger Cruz was in marketing and traveled for business. “They had a very close relationship with their father,” Aaronson recalled of the boys. Cruz spiraled downhill when his father died and later his mother. People who knew of Nikolas Cruz say his life was full of love the day his parents adopted him.
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