Nikolas Cruz, Shooting Suspect, Had Been Expelled From School, Authorities Say<br />After the shooting on Wednesday, Mr. Gard said that several students told him<br />that Mr. Cruz was taken with a girl at Stoneman Douglas High School “to the point of stalking her.”<br />In the interview with the Miami news station, the student said Mr. Cruz was a junior at Stoneman Douglas High School when he was expelled last year.<br />“The crazy stuff that he did was not right for school, and he got kicked out of school multiple times for that kind of stuff.”<br />Jim Gard, a math teacher at Stoneman Douglas High School, said in an interview<br />that Mr. Cruz was a student in his class during the first semester of the 2016-17 school year.<br />Everyone predicted it.”<br />Brandon Minoff, a student at Stoneman Douglas High School, said in an interview with CNN<br />that a teacher assigned him to work with Mr. Cruz on a group project two years ago.<br />“As far as I know, he didn’t have any friends.”<br />School officials declined to say why Mr. Cruz no longer attended Douglas High School.<br />He said that students would joke that if anyone were to open fire inside the school, it would be Mr. Cruz.<br />At a school with about 3,000 students, Mr. Cruz stayed to himself and had few friends<br />but struck fear in some students with erratic behavior and an affinity for violence.
