FBI Says It Didn't Pursue Warning on Florida School Killer

(Bloomberg) -- The FBI disclosed that it failed to follow up on a detailed warning about the 19-year-old gunman who is charged with killing 17 people and wounding a dozen others at a Florida high school on Wednesday.

A “person close to Nikolas Cruz” contacted the FBI's public access tipline on Jan. 5 to “report concerns about him,” the FBI said in a statement Friday. The caller provided information about “Cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,” the statement said.

Florida Governor Rick Scott said the FBI's failure was “unacceptable” and called for the resignation of FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“Seventeen innocent people are dead and acknowledging a mistake isn't going to cut it,” Scott said in a statement. “The FBI director needs to resign.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he's initiated a Justice Department review of how the FBI acted. “It is now clear that the warning signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed. We see the tragic consequences of those failures,” he said in a statement.

FBI Criticism

The revelation comes as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have criticized the FBI for its conduct of investigations into his campaign and into Hillary Clinton's use of private email while she was secretary of state. Trump also suggested on Twitter that the Parkland, Florida, community should have reported suspicions about Cruz to authorities.

“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!” he said.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said at a Friday news conference that his office had received more than 20 calls about Cruz in the past few years, according to the Associated Press.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Representative Ted Deutch, a Democrat who represents the area, said Congress must conduct its own investigation. “Our system utterly failed the families of seventeen innocent souls,” Rubio added in a statement emailed to reporters.

The agency said the information from the caller should have been “assessed as a potential threat to life” and should have been forwarded to its Miami field office, “where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken.”

“We have determined that these protocols were not followed for the information,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. “The information was not provided to the Miami Field Office, and no further investigation was conducted at that time.”

In a letter to Wray released on Friday night, Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, asked the bureau to “brief the committees on the tip, protocols, and FBI's actions before and after the incident as soon as possible, but no later than March 2, 2018.”

Semiautomatic Rifle

Authorities said that Cruz attacked the school with a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle that he bought legally. It was the same type of firearm that's been used in many mass shootings, including in Las Vegas last year, Orlando in 2016 and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. The Parkland massacre was the deadliest school shooting since 20 children and six adults were killed in the rampage at Sandy Hook.

Cruz has admitted to the shooting, according to an arrest affidavit reported by the New York Times and others.

Wray said he was “committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.”

On Friday, Trump met with medical staff and some victims at Broward Health North Hospital and also stopped at the Broward sheriff's office. He made the visits on the way to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

He later tweeted pictures from the hospital visit, with the comment: “Our entire Nation, w/one heavy heart, continues to pray for the victims & their families in Parkland, FL. To teachers, law enforcement, first responders & medical professionals who responded so bravely in the face of danger: We THANK YOU for your courage!”

To contact the reporter on this story: Nafeesa Syeed in Washington at nsyeed@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Mike Dorning, John McCluskey

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.